Hawaiki, the new subsea cable system that will link Australia, New Zealand, and islands of the south Pacific with Hawaii and the mainland United States, reached another construction milestone. The 14,000 km of undersea fiber-optic cable is in the final stages of being loaded aboard TE SubCom’s cable-laying vessels, the CS Global Sentinel and the CS Responder. Installation of the system will commence in early October 2017. The fiber cable was manufactured at SubCom’s Newington, New Hampshire facility, along with more than 170 completed repeaters. TE SubCom also noted that horizontal directional drilling (HDD) for the cable landing in Pacific…

Hawaiki Cable has chosen 81year old Northland based electrotechnology company McKay Ltd to build its cable landing station at Mangawhai Heads in Northland, signing a multimillion dollar contract with the company. Hawaiki said McKay would be responsible for the complete civil, building, electrical, standby generation, AC and DC UPS systems, and HVAC systems. McKay’s managing director, Lindsay Faithfull, said Hawaiki had very particular requirements and the company had come up with “a unique Northland based solution that included our local partners and met Hawaiki’s needs.” Construction of the 14,000 kilometre cable that will link New Zealand to Australia, Hawaii and…

It’s easier than ever for Kiwis to watch TVNZ shows with today’s launch of a revamped tvnz.co.nz bringing together Live TV and OnDemand viewing. TVNZ now live streams all its channels – giving viewers the option to view 1, 2 and DUKE on devices at the same time as on air broadcast – and offers local TV shows, Live sports, 1 NEWS, international dramas, box sets, movies and short form videos, all for free OnDemand. “The big growth trends among New Zealand viewers are the demand for video and viewing on mobile devices, and we’re responding to this by bringing…

This weekend the largest ever ransomware attack in the world has been hitting computer systems of private and public organisations in hundreds of countries, NZTech chief executive Graeme Muller says. Spread via phishing emails where an email that appears to come from someone people know encourages them to open an attachment or click on a link, only to deposit a small piece of malicious code on your system. The bug looks for machines running unpatched versions of Microsoft Windows and then spreads across your network infecting other machines as it goes, Muller says. “Called a ransomware as it locks people…

Spark has launched PureCloud, a new customer experience system by Genesys, to help New Zealand businesses manage and service their customers more seamlessly and affordably over the cloud, keeping on top of rising demand for smarter customer experiences. The new subscription-based contact centre infrastructure brings together inbound and outbound calling, email, webchat, social media, and fax (for those using it), enabling customer interactions to be viewed and managed as single, unbroken journeys across platforms. Richard Adams, GM Solutions for Spark Digital, said this is the kind of experience customers are growing to expect from businesses: "More and more, people expect…

By-product of Marcom build up Vodafone has joined in the online media gold rush by what it describes as “launching its own news website.” The New Zealand subsidiary of the British mobiles telco in recent times has swelled its marketing communications force with television, business, and IT sector journalists. The company’s “news” website meanwhile resembles an online version of the once familiar IT sector marketing support instrument, the house magazine. The company’s news site hardly surprisingly features Vodafone in its community role. Notably with emphasis on its participation in the post–earthquake Christchurch reconstruction participation. Also its ability to deploy helpful…

Co-venturing Wellington and Auckland universities will rub collegiate shoulders with world’s major production engineer General Motors subsidiary Holden’s arrival in Newsroom as founder-backer of the online information enterprise is GM’s second venture into the New Zealand information sector. It was New Zealand’s major data processing proprietor when it owned Databank through another of its subsidiaries, Electronic Data Systems. Databank at this time was considered the southern hemisphere’s pre-eminent non-governmental data processing operation in terms of capacity. GM’s return this year to the New Zealand information sector carries value through the early involvement in it also of the University of Auckland…

2017’s already been identified by Vodafone as the year of data explosion, with Kiwis using more and more of it to stay up to date. But it’s not just being chewed up by the binge-watching habits that online-only series like Netflix’s Stranger Things brings about. Kiwis are still just as interested in what’s happening around them, and the video and stories giving insight into their changing world. In fact, hyper levels of mobility in how we consume news - and how often we expect updates - appears to have increased the appetites of everyday readers. That’s all part of why…

2017’s already been identified by Vodafone as the year of data explosion, with Kiwis using more and more of it to stay up to date. But it’s not just being chewed up by the binge-watching habits that online-only series like Netflix’s Stranger Things brings about. Kiwis are still just as interested in what’s happening around them, and the video and stories giving insight into their changing world. In fact, hyper levels of mobility in how we consume news - and how often we expect updates, appears to have increased the appetites of everyday readers That’s all part of why Vodafone…

New figures released by Chorus have shed light on New Zealanders’ broadband habits, including the busiest day of the year for surfing the internet. On an average day, data usage on the Chorus network is at its lowest at 5am and begins to rise between 6am and 8:30am. Usage remains consistent during the day and jumps sharply from 3:30pm. “It is unlikely to be a coincidence that it’s the same time certain data-hungry members of the family wander in from school,” says Chorus network strategy manager Kurt Rodgers. “We slow down again over dinner time, and from 7:30pm we climb…

The Government has today released a further Discussion Document as part of its review of the regulatory framework that will apply from 2020, which sets out final views on the approach to UFB fibre services, and new proposals for copper services for feedback. The Government has departed from the previous combined copper and fibre regulated asset base proposal. The key changes are: · The final decision is that UFB fibre will be regulated under a traditional utility style building block model framework. The initial valuation of the UFB fibre network will be determined by the Commerce Commission based on unrecovered…