Starlink NZ revenue growing by 30% annually

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wellygary

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#323049 20-Oct-2025 09:00

Last week The Com Com published its Telecom Levey determination, and these things are as boring as ditch water.

But they allow you to get info on how companies like Starlink are going,

Currently they have about 2% of market revenue, (there is a long complex formula that allows for overs and unders based on money in and money out,) but it clearly confirms the growth of Starlin, with "Revenue" rising from $73 million in 23/24 to over $100 million in 24/25..

The WISPs must be getting absolutely hammered...

https://www.comcom.govt.nz/assets/Documents/202425-telecommunications-development-levy-liability-allocation-determination/Draft-2024-25-Telecommunications-Development-Levy-Liability-Allocation-Determination-16-October-2025.pdf

24/25

23/24

CamH

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#3426611 20-Oct-2025 09:59

Once we get some competition in the satellite market (i.e Amazon Kuiper) - the WISP market is going to suffer.

Most of our customers that we know of on WISPs have either moved to Starlink or been in an area that's had a 4G/5G expansion thanks to RCG.

The few WISPs that hang on will be for the customer service that people don't get from the larger companies, but we'll absolutely see a thinning of that market in the years to come.

snj

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#3426613 20-Oct-2025 10:04

There was an article on NZ Herald about this the other day, Starlink rise and spectrum starvation blamed as rural internet provider Evolution Networks goes into liquidation (it's a Premium article), Jesse Archer from Full Flavour (who are/were? active here) made some interesting comments about the issues WISPs are currently facing, especially with regards to spectrum allocations in the 3 & 6 GHz spaces.

MichaelNZ

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#3426783 20-Oct-2025 17:50

The ISP I work for has a small number of DSL clients left.

Some of them have recently left us for Starlink and if this trajectory is maintained DSL will fall off a cliff for us within the next year independent of any action by Chorus.

Chorus have recently done a (paid) network build to my home and as soon as our address is lodged in their database for UFB (oh, the waiting...) I will order the ONT install and, once this is done, terminate my VDSL.

I am presently working to try and get a couple of clients across the line for a paid UFB install. These are addresses we see as highly viable and thus its worth arranging the quotes for the client. But if one or both choose to not proceed they will be in the same boat as anyone else on DSL.

All of the few left will be nudged to move to Starlink, or Amazon if this is available soon.

Wireless ISP's are not relevant to this scenario. The only migration path we are supporting is paid UFB installs and LEO. In this context we have no clients who could have a free UFB install as they were already proactively upgraded at the time.

A common cultural trait of the WISP industry for as long as I can remember is operators who are highly individualistic and believe they own the territory, this will remain the case, and the customer had better have a good reason for wanting more then 20Mbps because that's fast enough to browse the internet and watch Netflix.

In the meantime the more commercially astute operators have been rolling out their own fibre networks and the ones who thought they were on top of the world are discovering there is a new game on the scene in LEO and they can't catch up.

This is not just a New Zealand thing.

In the USA - which is behind here - I am seeing the industry divided up between those who see the writing on the wall in favour of fibre and others who believe the free-market should reign supreme as long as its in their favour so they can keep offering the same old slow wireless.

We have no love for Elon's politics and this was one of the factors which prompted us to shell out the cash for Chorus to run fibre to us. But leaving that aside, from a cold hard technological and commercial perspective LEO is the winner for areas not serviced by fibre.

WFH Linux Systems and Networks Engineer in the Internet industry | Specialising in Mikrotik | APNIC member | Open to job offers | ZL2NET