Spark - 5G Coverage + data instability (Wellington & parts of Auckland)

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Spark - 5G Coverage + data instability (Wellington & parts of Auckland)

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#3494852 23-May-2026 08:28

My parents live on the North Shore near Cut hill / Greenhithe and Spark 4G performs so poor that YouTube buffers on my work phone Samsung S23fe but sweet solid 5G on my personal phone!

boosacnoodle

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#3494859 23-May-2026 09:40

Along those lines, it’s pretty confounding to see both 2degrees and One NZ having near full 5G coverage in Rolleston (fastest growing town/district in the country) and yet not even one tower with 5G on Spark there. Also they have around half the physical locations on Spark, so service will always be poorer. Regularly see posts online to this effect from people moving to the area. I guess the Connexa / tower sales thing makes sense in this context as it should be, in theory at least, easier to join up to some existing 2d/ONZ towers.

I’m still unclear on how the upgrades are prioritised and it’s likely I’ll never know as it’s commercial but the fact that the last upgrade was in 2021 (according to RSM) is pretty telling. And it’s not as if Spark is the cheapest in the market. The lack of 5G also means that there’s less capacity and value-add services (WBB 5G upsell) that they can sell, too. I wonder if the outcome is somewhat pre-determined - the network is bad in that area, so no one signs up, so the network is never prioritised for upgrade in that area, rinse and repeat.

Tbqh Wi-Fi Calling isn’t a fix either. Particularly in rural areas with a fringe signal, even with Wi-Fi Calling enabled your battery gets absolutely decimated. I actually have an iOS shortcut setup for this at my families home. When m phone connects to the wifi, it puts the phone in flight mode and vice versa. This saves on battery big time but is a bit of a hack - bring back the Sure Signal, I say.

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#3494888 23-May-2026 14:57

Has anyone seen b5/n5 in Christchurch or anywhere in the South Island for that matter post-3G shutdown?

boosacnoodle

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#3495655 26-May-2026 21:03

Euston Street performing well. What a difference the Nokia radios make!

boosacnoodle

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#3496040 28-May-2026 09:07

Avondale North (Aranui, Christchurch) is now live.

boosacnoodle

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#3499559 2-Jun-2026 17:17

Looks like Peterborough Street should be active shortly.

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Gwilson

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#3499582 2-Jun-2026 18:58

My experience is limited to Tesla cellular connectivity (Spark). I notice recently frequent dropouts and logged the issue with Tesla directly. They (Tesla) blame the retirement of 3G but as noted already 4G/LTE are the applicable cellular standards - not 3G.

It's quite consistent driving North out of Wellington it drops out just before Porirua and then reconnects in Mana. in the weekend it also dropped off heading South down Ngauaranga Gorge, reconnecting in Thorndon.

My 2degrees iphone and apple watch maintain connectivity fine. It does appear to be a hand-off type of issue on Spark in my case. Thinking of cancelling the Tesla data service and reverting to hotspotting from my phone.

UncleArthur

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#3508994 6-Jul-2026 15:12

Catching up on this thread, so thought I'd add my experience

I drive daily between Te Awamutu and Hamilton, I like to stream music / online podcasts etc while making the drive.
I have a Samsung S25 Ultra, with a 2d personal sim, and a Spark work sim.

Naturally, I prefer to use the work data 😇

I find in about 4 places the streaming will just die with the Spark sim.
If I do the same trip with 2d for data, no worries.
If I do the same trip with spark for data, and Spark set to "prefer 4g", then also no worries.

If I look at a spark 5g coverage map, the places where it dies exactly correspond to the spots with 5g coverage along that route, so as others have said, looks like the 4g / 5g handover is somewhat broken.

We have ~70 Spark mobiles in our business and we operate nationwide, anecdotally this is happening to many of our staff.

Very furstrating.

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Aucklandjafa

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#3508998 6-Jul-2026 15:18

UncleArthur:

Catching up on this thread, so thought I'd add my experience

I drive daily between Te Awamutu and Hamilton, I like to stream music / online podcasts etc while making the drive.
I have a Samsung S25 Ultra, with a 2d personal sim, and a Spark work sim.

Naturally, I prefer to use the work data 😇

I find in about 4 places the streaming will just die with the Spark sim.
If I do the same trip with 2d for data, no worries.
If I do the same trip with spark for data, and Spark set to "prefer 4g", then also no worries.

If I look at a spark 5g coverage map, the places where it dies exactly correspond to the spots with 5g coverage along that route, so as others have said, looks like the 4g / 5g handover is somewhat broken.

We have ~70 Spark mobiles in our business and we operate nationwide, anecdotally this is happening to many of our staff.

Very furstrating.

Not that you should have to do this, but honestly, it’s best to just keep your phone set to 4g until they get their 5g network sorted - at least their 4g network, for the most part, is pretty solid with decent download speeds

mail2mm

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#3509018 6-Jul-2026 16:54

boosacnoodle:

Tbqh Wi-Fi Calling isn’t a fix either. Particularly in rural areas with a fringe signal, even with Wi-Fi Calling enabled your battery gets absolutely decimated. I actually have an iOS shortcut setup for this at my families home. When m phone connects to the wifi, it puts the phone in flight mode and vice versa. This saves on battery big time but is a bit of a hack - bring back the Sure Signal, I say.

I saw your recent GZ post about 4G/5G switching and using WiFi calling as an alternative. I live in Auckland Central (3rd floor in a concrete apartment building) upper Shortland Street, use Spark mobile service, and in my home office I have 2 bar (4G), 1 bar (5G) signal strength on my iPhone 12 and my wife's iPhone 16. Unless I switch to Airplane mode the iPhones are reluctant to switch to solid 3 bar signal strength WiFi calling. Sometimes the iPhones switch from cellular to WiFi and back again unless in Airplane mode. I can go to the ground level outside the front of the building, and I have a solid 3 bar (5G) signal strength with voice and data service working fine.

Your iOS short cut sounds like a great workaround. It would help keep me from forgetting to turnoff Airplane mode when I leave the house! Care to share your shortcut?

richms

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#3509094 7-Jul-2026 09:52

Have noticed that the premium connectivity in my tesla is close to useless over the last few days. Navigating without connectivity comes up, music wont play. Im driving so not messing with the web browser to see if that does anything. Eventually it gets the signal bars with the slash thru it so its properly offline, and some time later it comes back working again. One of these was from basically the Vic park flyover, up around under Grafton bridge, and I only got it back again once off the motorway and well up Grafton road. This is on top of the constant useless coverage on the shore between caltex birkdale up birkdale road and onto eskdale and up to glenfield road, where it will get signal back and start working near the top of eskdale.

Its so bad I was actually wondering if the car was broken, but checking with others and its the same in theirs around the shore.

I stopped bothering with skinny because the performance was so crap around home in beach have, sticking with one because it works full speed even in the basement so have no actual phone to compare it with.

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MikeB4

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#3509140 7-Jul-2026 12:42

We were in the Wairarapa over the weekend (Saturday 4/7) looking at properties. We could not get 5G connection in Carterton, Greytown or Martinborough. This was on my phone or my wife's phone. Normally we get good 5G coverage.

A world that has gone totally insane.

grantius

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#3509152 7-Jul-2026 13:22

UncleArthur:

Catching up on this thread, so thought I'd add my experience

I drive daily between Te Awamutu and Hamilton, I like to stream music / online podcasts etc while making the drive.
I have a Samsung S25 Ultra, with a 2d personal sim, and a Spark work sim.

Naturally, I prefer to use the work data 😇

I find in about 4 places the streaming will just die with the Spark sim.
If I do the same trip with 2d for data, no worries.
If I do the same trip with spark for data, and Spark set to "prefer 4g", then also no worries.

If I look at a spark 5g coverage map, the places where it dies exactly correspond to the spots with 5g coverage along that route, so as others have said, looks like the 4g / 5g handover is somewhat broken.

We have ~70 Spark mobiles in our business and we operate nationwide, anecdotally this is happening to many of our staff.

Very furstrating.

I wonder if it's due to sparks n5 "5g" which is pretty poor as usually it's only n5+b3 or another single band, much less bandwidth compared to b28+the more CA's with b1/b3/b7 etc you would get in 4g mode.

boosacnoodle

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#3509278 7-Jul-2026 15:28

Interesting mention of the Tesla experiencing issues of late with Spark. I've also started experiencing issues with my BYD which is also on Spark. Overnight it just says poor cell service until about 8 in the morning each morning when it starts responding. Not an issue with any of our phones and we're around 200 metres from the tower with full bars and 4G/5G coverage. Only started being a problem recently. The only thing I can think of that's really in common between the Tesla and BYD is both are roaming (AU) SIMs. Maybe there is a roaming fault?

stevenn

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#3509356 8-Jul-2026 01:45

boosacnoodle:

Interesting mention of the Tesla experiencing issues of late with Spark. I've also started experiencing issues with my BYD which is also on Spark. Overnight it just says poor cell service until about 8 in the morning each morning when it starts responding. Not an issue with any of our phones and we're around 200 metres from the tower with full bars and 4G/5G coverage. Only started being a problem recently. The only thing I can think of that's really in common between the Tesla and BYD is both are roaming (AU) SIMs. Maybe there is a roaming fault?

The workaround I found for BYD is going to the settings on your infotainment and going to the connections area, spam press the text for the cellular data toggle. Dont toggle it on and off, you actually have to press on the text, I know it seems weird but it opens up the sim menu in the car. From there you can toggle manual network selection and select 2degrees. You will be unable to connect to OneNZ because Telstra Wholesale only has roaming agreements with spark and 2degrees. This has also been removed on some BYD versions, so try and see if it works. Worked for me, the spark service was terrible, as soon as I locked it to 2degrees it has been flawless.

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