Spark New Zealand announced today it has deployed 4G to its 150th mobile site over the 700MHz radio spectrum on its Hangatiki site, marking a key milestone for customers in the Waikato region where trials of the 700MHz spectrum began just over 12-months ago.

Since trials started in Morrinsville in April last year 106 sites have been enabled with 4G on 700MHz throughout the Waikato – with the remaining 44 sites lighting up 4G across other parts of regional New Zealand.

More than 60 per-cent of smartphones and a number of tablets available for customers to purchase on Spark’s mobile network are now compatible with the 700MHz spectrum, making it even easier for customers to access 4G services to share, upload, download and stream content faster and more reliably than ever before.

Waikato dairy farmer Bruce Thomas says over the past 12-months access to fast 4G speeds have given him the confidence to do a whole lot more on mobile.

“4G is bloody fast. Access to these fast speeds has given me the confidence to download and experiment with new mobile apps and software to make our lives easier on our farm in Morrinsville. These sorts of apps have been around for a while but in the past I didn’t bother, thinking they might be waste of time with the type of connectivity we had but, it’s a different story now.

“My sharemilker, Craig and I use many of these apps to do things faster. We regularly use the MINDA Lookup app which gives you real-time access to LIC’s data on your herd. It’s really quick and allows you to identify the animal on the spot and check vital stats like health and ancestry to help inform my decisions while I’m out in the paddock. Being able to access and update this data in real-time saves me trekking back to the house to logon to the home computer to get this type of information,” said Mr Thomas.

As part of its commitment to connect customers to their digital lives throughout the regions of New Zealand, Spark New Zealand invested in four lots of the 700MHz spectrum last year - more than any other provider, in order to roll out 4G throughout the country over the next three years.

General Manager of Networks for Spark Connect, Colin Brown says: “The more spectrum a provider owns, the more capacity it has to carry data at faster speeds on the network, even at the busiest times.

“Investing in the 700MHz spectrum is like adding more lanes to a highway. We invested $158 million to secure four lanes of the highway – more than any other provider. By adding more 4G lanes we’re adding a whole lot more capacity to our mobile network and we are in an ideal position to ensure customers have a seamless experience using mobile, particularly as access to 4G becomes available to more New Zealanders.”

Access to fast mobile speeds will allow rural business to harness new technologies whether at the farm-gate, on the road or in the paddock said Mr Brown.

“It’s an exciting time for agribusiness customers who can take advantage of new technologies like Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications to do things like monitor soil and rainfall levels or track herd movements.

“M2M technology makes the process of recording, storing and uploading key data to the likes of the Cloud faster, driving greater productivity and saving significant cost to the business,” said Mr Brown.