RIP the NEC NEAX. You will be missed.

Friday 18th December 2020 passed by without most of us even realising the significance of date, but for people located in Devonport and Miramar it marked a significant milestone in the history of telecommunications in New Zealand. The day saw Spark beginning the decommissioning process of their NEC NEAX phone exchanges in both suburbs, meaning copper based Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) connections in these suburbs will no longer be available off the NEAX switches which have provided most phone services in New Zealand for the last few decades.

While NEAX exchange consolidation and migration of customers to Spark's Internet Protocol (IP) based converged communications network (CCN) has been occurring for the last 18 months or so in some rural areas, this marks the first decommissioning of NEAX exchanges in a suburban area, and the first two locations in New Zealand that will no longer be able to receive copper based phone services.

These are also the first two suburbs where Spark will also no longer install new copper based xDSL broadband, however xDSL based broadband connections will still be available from other retail service providers (RSP's) in these areas.

Spark customers in these areas were required to migrate their Spark voice and broadband services either to fibre, or to a fixed wireless access (FWA) solution that will carry voice calls over the Spark mobile network. Both of these solutions allow customers to keep their current corded or cordless phones, as these simply plug into the voice port on the fibre Optical Network Terminal (ONT) or 4G FWA router.

Business customers who have an old analogue or ISDN PABX have had the option of either purchasing new hardware to integrate their old PBX, or making the move to a more modern VoIP based on-site or cloud based PABX solution.

There has been some confusion over the migration of copper voice services, because plans are also under way to begin decommissioning the Chorus copper network in New Zealand that is used to deliver both copper PSTN voice services and xDSL based broadband services. While they may appear directly related, the shutdown of the NEAX exchanges and decommissioning of copper are actually two very different announcements and are only loosely related.

Spark are migrating voice customers because their oldest NEC NEAX phone exchanges are now approaching 40 years old and are end of life. The first NEAX 61K digital exchange was installed in Lower Hutt in 1981, and NEAX exchanges were rolled out across the country during the '80s to replace old rotary and crossbar exchanges. By the early '90s New Zealand had one of the most advanced PSTN networks in the world, with close to 100% of landline customers being serviced from state of the art digital phone exchanges. This great video shows the inner workings of one of those exchanges -

Spark (Telecom New Zealand at that point) first announced plans to decommission their NEAX PSTN network in 2005, with plans to migrate all 1.7 million copper PSTN customers to their Next Generation Network (NGN) voice platform once the Fibre to the Node (FTTN) copper cabinetisation project was completed in 2012.

Unfortunately this project faced technological challenges that delayed it, and was ultimately put on hold due to the announcement by the newly elected National Government in 2009 of a nationwide Fibre to the Home (FTTH) network that would roll out fibre to 75% of premises over the following 10 years. At this point plans to decommission the NEAX network were pushed back, with the expectation this would occur once the FTTH rollout was completed in 2019.

With the completion of the fibre rollout the number of remaining customers on copper NEAX connections is a mere fraction of what it was, with most fibre customers having their voice services delivered via VoIP over their fibre connection.

Spark are replacing the NEAX exchanges with Ericsson's IP based CCN core network which has been providing voice services to Spark's fibre and FWA customers for the last few years. Unbeknown to many people, the CCN has also been providing voice services to a large number of customers in rural areas who still have regular copper landline connections.

Rather than the copper landline terminating on a NEAX exchange, it is terminated on an ISAM-V voice port in a Chorus roadside cabinet or exchange where the call is converted to IP and transported to the CCN network. This results in a phone service that is delivered over copper to the premises, and functions in exactly the same way as an old school NEAX based copper landline.

While there is no official public timeframe yet for the shutdown of all NEAX exchanges, it is very likely that virtually all of them will be decommissioned within the next two years. Many suburbs in Wellington will see their copper phone services discontinued by the middle of 2021.

As of December 2019 when the rollout of the FTTH UFB (ultra fast broadband) fibre network was completed, 75% of New Zealand premises had fibre available to them and were capable of receiving Gigabit fibre connections. The expansion of the UFB network under the UFB2 project will see this increase to 87% of premises by December 2022, and it's likely that expansion will occur after this point to increase fibre coverage to another 2-3% of premises in some very small towns, but beyond that the economics simply do not stack up. The remaining 10% of premises in New Zealand will continue be serviced either by copper, fixed wireless or satellite services.

At some point within the next year or so, Chorus will announce a timeline for the shutdown of copper services in areas that already have fibre, with an update to the Telecommunications Act in mid 2022 allowing this to happen. This won't be a simple overnight nationwide shutdown - it will be a phased shutdown to ensure that the last remaining copper customers have time to migrate their copper based broadband services.

What is important to note is that there are no plans at this point to remove copper services in areas that do not have fibre. Copper services in these areas could well remain in place for at least another 10-15 years, or possibly even longer.

The fact the first NEAX shutdown has largely gone by without even a mention is really a sign of the times and shows how few people really care about the technology behind day to day things such as a telephone. The NEAX switches have switched billions of calls over the last four decades with a level of uptime that is simply remarkable - in a modern world where "five nines" is deemed the benchmark, the NEAX has even put that figure to shame.

For all of the outrage from a small few over copper services being discontinued, the simple reality is that the world has moved on, and 99.999% of people simply don't care. 

RIP the NEAX. You will be missed - by some of us at least!

NOTE: As a side note to this, there are still a small number of copper based voice services that are still in use in both Miramar and Devonport. This includes some specific services where Spark have agreed to service extensions. Spark will not be disconnecting any services over the Christmas period, and relinquishment of these services will begin again in mid January.