There’s a hard truth many Kiwis are reminded of when they head into the most beautiful and remote parts of Aotearoa over the summer months.

While our mobile networks offer coverage to over 99% of the population where they live and work, that coverage only extends to 60% of the country’s landmass. Despite ongoing efforts to extend mobile coverage in rural areas, many hard-to-reach places remain too difficult and expensive to connect with terrestrial networks.

“Due to the nature of our unique geography, that’s unlikely to change,” says Sharina Nisha, General Manager of Network Services at One NZ and a 30-year veteran of the telecommunications industry who has worked on mobile network deployments from the old 2G to the latest 5G technology.

“But soon we will have technology that will provide outdoor mobile coverage no matter where you are in New Zealand,” adds Nisha.

“With an enabled plan, once connectivity is rolled out to your device, as long as you can see the sky you can send a text message.”

A constellation of possibilities

The debut of constellations of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) has not only revolutionised the delivery of broadband to rural areas with SpaceX’s Starlink service leading the charge.

This newer generation of Starlink ‘Direct to Cell’ satellites will soon be able to provide coverage for compatible mobile phones from hundreds of kilometres away in space. For our agricultural and forestry workers, conservation rangers and anyone heading into our national parks, the service will be a game changer when it comes to staying in touch and having a vital link to the outside world in an emergency.

“You might be driving on a deserted stretch of road that doesn’t have mobile coverage,” says Nisha.

“At the moment you can’t just text for help. But soon you will be able to, and not just on the land. Satellite to mobile services will extend around 20 kilometres out to sea too.”

Such is the potential value of satellite-to-mobile coverage over our long, sparsely populated and mountainous country.

The decision to offer the service came directly in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle, the severe tropical cyclone that devastated parts of the east coast of the North Island and caused extensive flooding in Auckland.

“Our cell sites remained intact, but we lost power to 70% of them in some regions, and fibre backhaul providing connectivity was damaged,” Nisha says.

“It exposed the vulnerability we have with our land-based infrastructure.”

A vital link in a time of crisis

Starlink high-speed internet delivered connectivity to many cell sites as the people of Hawkes Bay and Tairāwhiti responded to the emergency. It got One NZ’s management and engineers thinking about how satellites could play a greater role in network resilience, and keeping Kiwis safer when disaster strikes.

While One NZ’s satellite-to-mobile service will start with the ability to send and receive text messages, the technical roadmap also includes cell broadcasts via satellite. Currently, our mobile operators can send emergency messages to hundreds of thousands of mobile users in a geographic area using the mobile network - as long as the cell sites are working.

“We saw this play out with Hurricane Milton in Florida just a few weeks ago, where Starlink satellites with direct-to-cell capability played a vital role in keeping people connected as the extreme weather disrupted their ground-based mobile network,” says Nisha.

Satellite-to-mobile will also be able to deliver crucial safety cell broadcast alerts to customers that don’t have land based mobile coverage. When voice calling becomes available, One NZ will enable 111 emergency calls as well, allowing anyone to make a call regardless of what mobile operator they primarily use.

So how does this incredible satellite to mobile coverage work?

“The engineering is quite fascinating,” says Nisha.

“It’s still the same 4G technology we use to connect on the ground, but the cell sites are actually in low Earth orbit, around 360 kilometres above the Earth,” she explains.

The Starlink satellites are equipped with highly sensitive phased array antennae which can pick up minute signals emanating from smartphones on Earth.

The satellites communicate with each other via laser beams, while text messages, voice calls and data transfers are sent to satellite ground stations in New Zealand where they are distributed over One NZ’s core network.

Around 200 Starlink satellites orbiting the Earth will initially allow satellite texting via the Starlink service. As more satellites are added, voice calling and basic data transfers will be possible too.

One NZ is currently testing how different types of smartphones might work, and ultimately we’re aiming to have services run on most 4G VoLTE smartphones. However, a subset of more modern handsets will be optimised with a software update first to guide users through the process of text messaging via satellite.

Local testing set to begin

One NZ will announce eligible mobile plans and phones before launch. It has been preparing its network for the debut of satellite-to-mobile and will begin testing the service locally this month. US-based testing by T-Mobile and SpaceX has already been highly successful.

One NZ plans to support basic Rich Communication Services (RCS) messaging, which lets you see if a sent message has been received and read. In an emergency, knowing you’ve successfully gotten the word out is crucial.

“This is about giving our customers the basic connectivity to text family to let them know they are safe, or to text for help if they need it,” says Nisha.

For boaties, it’s another communications lifeline alongside marine radio and satellite-enabled emergency beacons. But the possibilities are endless with the satellites able to communicate with Internet of Things (IoT) devices on the ground too.

“That could prove incredibly useful for monitoring traps in pest eradication programmes, or for environmental monitoring in remote areas,” Nisha says.

“The first step is launching the text messaging service as soon as we can, followed by calling capability. Then we can turn our attention to some of the other really innovative things that this technology enables.”

For more information go to one.nz