Wild weather drives 300% surge in texting through space on One NZ Satellite

Following the wild weather across Aotearoa last week, One NZ customers in Palmerston North down including the South Island were able to stay in touch with their contacts and loved ones via a 'disaster response' satellite-to-mobile service, leading to a 300% increase in texts sent via space.

At its worst, the weather took out power to more than 130 One NZ and RCG cell sites, which in previous years meant mobile coverage gaps, and was also a problem faced by New Zealanders on other mobile networks.

However, One NZ Satellite disaster response provided a vital lifeline for many One NZ customers to send messages while engineers worked to get the ground-based networks back up and running.

Ian Sutton, Head of Network Services says: "We know how important connectivity is for our customers, and we wanted to help keep them in touch in an emergency. Thankfully One NZ satellite worked exactly as planned, acting as a vital safety net keeping people connected by text, during the weather events of last week."

One NZ deployed over 20 generators to impacted areas and worked across the long weekend to get the network back up and running for customers.

"With power now restored across the network, we're returning to normal services today."

The 'disaster response' protocols put in place by One NZ and Starlink gave One NZ customers with a VoLTE-capable roaming device the ability to send and receive text messages at no extra charge. This meant most 4G and 5G phones could access basic messaging (SMS), with device eligibility here: https://one.nz/our-networks/volte/

Now, following the disaster response service being rolled back to normal operating protocols, One NZ Satellite TXT will continue to work on eligible phones and plans only - see https://http://one.nz/satellite for eligibility.

For the latest information on the status of our network please visit: https://one.nz/help/network-status/