New Zealand is a small country in the South Pacific. We’re far away from the rest of the world, have a quite large landmass (about the size of Germany) and very few people to fill it with (about 4.5 million compared to Germany’s 80 million). This setting creates an interesting scenario for a bunch of industries, among them the telecommunications sector.
One of the most expensive services in New Zealand (compared to pricing in other countries as well as the average income and cost of living) is using a mobile phone and in particularly data on a mobile phone. At this stage New Zealanders can use three mobile networks, provided by Vodafone NZ, Telecom NZ and 2degrees mobile. There are also a few virtual network operators like Orcon, Compass Communications and others who pretty much re-bundle offerings from one of the three large players under their own brand – I’ll keep them at the side at this stage.