In a year where both telco revenue and investment dipped by NZ$200 million and NZ$100 million, respectively.
New Zealanders increased their broadband usage at the peak of the pandemic last year, with the average fixed broadband usage rising to 284GB in June 2020, which was a 37% uptick from the year prior. « Our 2020 monitoring report includes the first COVID-19 lockdown period and it shows that changes in the way Kiwis worked, learned, and played led to significant growth in fixed broadband usage, » said Telecommunications commissioner Tristan Gilbertson. Mobile data usage also increased by 22% year-on-year to 3.3GB per month during that same period. The data usage trends were released by New Zealand’s Commerce Commission (ComCom) as part of its annual telecommunications monitoring report [PDF], which also unveiled total industry and connection metrics. Despite the increases in data usage, government testing showed that copper and fibre download speeds stayed fairly steady for most households. On average, download speeds for copper and Fibre 100 plans were largely unaffected while average download speeds for Fibre Max decreased by about 4%, the report said. Fixed wireless performance decreased by around 25% during April last year, however, which the report said was a reflection of the susceptibility of performance dips of these services. For the year to June 2020, New Zealand’s telecommunications retail industry saw revenue decline by NZ$200 million when compared to the previous year, while investment dipped NZ$100 million. Gilbertson said the drop in investment during the year was primarily due to the Ultra-Fast Broadband network now being 93% complete.
