Vodafone NZ customers are benefitting from a strategic investment program seeing more than 120 mobile cell sites upgraded or built in the first six months of 2020, as data use continues to grow by more than 40% each year.

Located right across Aotearoa - from the Far North to Southland - the upgrades predominantly add 4G or 4.5G technology and capacity, which is part of the company’s work in getting mobile towers ready for the fifth generation mobile network, 5G.

Sharina Nisha, Head of Platforms, Vodafone NZ, says: “We’re continually optimising mobile coverage for our customers to ensure their smartphone and wireless broadband devices offer a great experience. Our team has worked incredibly hard to upgrade 124 mobile sites in the past six months, despite the challenging disruptions of Covid-19 alert levels, as we know how important fast and reliable mobile coverage is for our customers.

“This investment is part of our response to New Zealander’s insatiable appetite for data, such as the rise of streaming YouTube and TikTok videos or joining work video conferences on the go. Mobile data use has been increasing more than 40% each year for the past few years, with the trend set to continue as 5G becomes more widespread.

“Wireless broadband offers Wi-Fi connectivity delivered over a mobile-enabled modem, which has been proving to be incredibly popular during Covid-19 when fibre cabling installations ceased or home offices needed to be set up quickly to offer a reliable internet connection potentially while other household members were streaming movies or other files. We expect wireless broadband demand to continue to ramp up so we’re planning our mobile network investments to outpace growing demand for these digital services.

“New Zealand is a large country so we’re focusing our upgrades in areas where there is the most demand - or the sharpest increases in data consumption - and we’ll continue to optimise our network to ensure we offer our customers a remarkable experience.”

The sites are located right across urban, regional and rural New Zealand - and includes new builds as well as adding new technology or extra capacity to existing sites.

For more information about Vodafone NZ’s mobile solutions, please visit www.vodafone.co.nz

NB: Wireless broadband is often referred to as ‘fixed wireless access’ (FWA).