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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boosacnoodle

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#3480977 15-Apr-2026 10:56

Halswell North is now live. This is a personal record for both download and upload for me on 5G. The tower is using Samsung gear as far as I can tell.

KiwiSurfer

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#3480979 15-Apr-2026 11:01

Nice speeds! Ping during upload is pretty good too.

If it's just gone live then more likely to be Nokia. What makes you think it is Samsung?

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#3480982 15-Apr-2026 11:07

@boosacnoodle that is a new site and will be Nokia not Samsung RAN

boosacnoodle

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#3480983 15-Apr-2026 11:11

You’d think so - but I’m not sure about that. Is this Nokia? I thought it was Samsung

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#3480989 15-Apr-2026 11:13

@boosacnoodle @KiwiSurfer that does look like a Samsung 5G panel

boosacnoodle

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#3480991 15-Apr-2026 11:18

Wigram East live now too. Appears to be Samsung, too. Both sites have 6xxxxx eNB ID which seems to confirm this. These are both very old sites (2+ years, as I recall, but could be wrong), so makes sense that they likely wouldn’t be Nokia as the gear was already fitted.

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KiwiSurfer

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#3480992 15-Apr-2026 11:19

Yes thats Samsung. The plot thickens! Would be interesting to see what CID is being used for the LTE channels -- 6xxxxx is Samsung while 3xxxxx is Nokia. Can look this up using NetMonster app on Android.

Was this site built ages ago and only just switched on by any chance?

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#3480993 15-Apr-2026 11:21

G-Mon Pro is good as well for getting site information

boosacnoodle

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#3481011 15-Apr-2026 12:22

It is 6xxxxx. I already answered that.

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#3481301 16-Apr-2026 13:06

gajan:

If anyone wants to DM some specific examples (time, phone#, location and problem experienced) ideally from the last few days as it’s easier to grab logs - will try and get someone to take a look.

DM'd

Ramblings from a mysterious lady who's into tech. Warning I may often create zingers.

boosacnoodle

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#3481362 16-Apr-2026 18:26

Quite a few new sites have already been certified this month, so I thought I would list them out:

Auckland

Birmingham Newark
Triangle Road
Okahu Bay (added b7)
Ponsonby Three Lamps (added b7)
Takanini North
Waikowhai
Wellington Street (added b5 and b7)
Western Springs (added b40)

Christchurch

Branston Park
Ferrymead South
Halswell North
Waltham Road
Wigram East
Woolston West
McLeans Island
Taylors Mistake

Otago

Brother Peaks (added b3)

And, of course, you cannot forget: the Starlink D2C launch.

I think it's fair to say the team at Spark have been extremely busy getting these upgrades out and the attention given by the likes of @gajan does not go unnoticed. Thank you, all! It's really pleasing to see some of the issues finally start to be resolved. Once these are all live, it's going to make a massive difference.

Note - just because a site is licensed it does not necessarily mean that it is unlocked yet.

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gajan

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#3481378 16-Apr-2026 19:51

Impressed by people's eyes on our towers and spectrum licenses! Glad to see the work of our fabulous engineering teams getting noticed given the amount of work that goes in designing, building and commissioning these sites!

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michaelmurfy

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#3481404 16-Apr-2026 23:14

Yeah agreed - it’s good to see so much happen in such a short time. Interestingly, despite my mobile still camping on good ole 4G on the 10th floor of our building I can now doomscroll and access mobile data fine so suspect those improvements came with the 3G shutdown.

I’m still not going to be happy until I see 5G all over Wellington so we can all bathe in the goodness that cures every known illness to man and allows me to download a Microsoft Office ISO in mere seconds but hey this is a start. It hasn’t gone unnoticed.

For the other issue I had - I’ll flick you more times @gajan for your records 😊 but really appreciate you looking into our issues too.

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boosacnoodle

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#3481515 17-Apr-2026 08:16

michaelmurfy:

Despite my mobile still camping on good ole 4G on the 10th floor of our building I can now doomscroll and access mobile data fine so suspect those improvements came with the 3G shutdown.

That was the main issue I had been facing and I also noticed this. Appears that they've tuned 5G properly now so that your device doesn't camp on 5G when it would otherwise be unusable.

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