Playing the telecommunications game in New Zealand

Abstract

New Zealand’s first telecommunication service arrived in 1862, when an electric telegraph line was established between Christchurch and Lyttelton, over a distance of 20km. After this event, the number and variety of both private and military transmission facilities expanded rapidly across New Zealand. The first telegraph service with Australia was launched in 1876 and this was followed by the first manual telephone exchange in 1881, with 30 customers connected. At this time, the New Zealand Post and Telegraph Department (NZPTD) was established to train and employ the country’s first public telecommunication operators. By 1930 the NZPTD had successfully connected all the main centres in New Zealand with a toll and telegraph network serving some 125,000 customers. Automatic telephone exchanges were introduced into the emerging network in the early 1900s, based on electro-mechanical switch technologies. This type of exchange evolved through until the late 1970s. A limited form of subscriber toll dialling (STD) service was introduced in 1953, but the real advances in long distance calls came with the provision of a national backbone of microwave radio technology installed in 1959. Throughout this period, various submarine cables were deployed to link New Zealand with Australia, North America, Europe and the South Pacific. The international capacity and route diversity was greatly enhanced with the introduction of a satellite earth station at Warkworth, North of Auckland in 1971, using the INTELSAT satellite network (Newman 2008). The pace of change of technology and the take-up of service accelerated through the 1960s and 1970s. Crossbar switching technology was introduced in the early 1970s to cope with the growth and by the late 1970s this technology was being replaced by the first generation of electronic switches. By the early 1980s the New Zealand Post Office provided services to over 95% of homes and businesses in New Zealand, and most of these homes had access to automated telephone service to anywhere in New Zealand and throughout the world. Furthermore, businesses could access a variety of sophisticated data services to meet their special needs for communication.