Paul Brislen: Copper switch-off is nothing to fear

It's the end of an era in telecommunications in New Zealand. Photo / 123rf

COMMENT

It's the end of an era.

For 100 years or so, New Zealand has relied on a network of copper lines buried in the ground to provide telecommunications needs, but that's coming rapidly to an end. The era of broadband means we've eked as much out of the copper lines as we can, and around the world these networks are being slowly and inevitably switched off.

New Zealand is very well served with a replacement network in the form of the ultra-fast broadband (UFB) fibre to the home network which currently reaches almost 87 per cent of the population.

This public-private partnership between Chorus, the local fibre companies (LFC) and the public is considered the gold standard in how to upgrade to a fibre network. In Australia only about a third of households can connect to fibre, despite spending more than $50 billion on the project. Britain has even fewer households connected and unless you live in the south of England you're unlikely to ever see it.

First, the simple fact of the matter is nobody will have their copper line cut off until fibre is available. If fibre isn't available where you are, your copper line will remain. Nobody will have their access cut off. The Commerce Commission gets to define where these specified fibre areas are in New Zealand and it publishes a map on its website.

Secondly, the programme is governed by the Copper Withdrawal Code, which means customers who are affected will be contacted by Chorus and probably also by their internet provider repeatedly before it happens. Nobody will wake up tomorrow and find they have no dial tone. You'll have lots of opportunity to ask questions and figure out what to do next before the copper is withdrawn. Chorus must provide a six-month notice period to any customers affected.

On top of that, Spark is also switching off the PSTN ( public switched telephone network). This is the old voice service that used to be all we used phone lines for, but which has largely been replaced by VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) services.

You probably can't hear the difference but VoIP is much more efficient and takes up much less space on the network, leaving room on the copper line for more broadband use. Again, if you're affected you'll get a letter from Spark detailing what is happening and what your choices are. Likewise, Vodafone is moving its customers to VoIP so they can expect to see letters and emails as well. It's not copper that's being switched off in these cases, it's the service that runs on the copper.

The Telecommunications Forum is developing a code to help communicate these changes and ensure that providers of alternative technologies market these in a clear and accurate way when a customer's copper-based services will no longer be available.

It's getting harder and harder for telcos to find the parts to keep these older services running and increasingly customers want more speed, more capacity and the ability to do far more than just talk on the telephone.

Covid and lockdown have shown us we can work from home, or the bach, or the regions, and the UFB is the network that will enable all of that. So people should take the opportunity to move their telecommunications services to faster, more reliable alternative technologies.

The future is bright – the sooner we can sign everyone up, the better.

Paul Brislen is the CEO of the Telecommunications Forum.