The Rural Connectivity Group is a joint venture formed by Spark, One NZ and 2degrees to cover rural areas. The telcos share towers, but have their own electronics on each.<\/p>\n
Severe weather has caused widespread devastation across the North Island, including in the Waioweka Gorge. Photo \/ NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi<\/p>\n
One NZ also announced $30,000 in donations from its charitable foundation for severe weather relief around Tauranga and the East Cape.<\/p>\n
2degrees: One-week pause<\/p>\n
2degrees yesterday said it had paused its 3G shutdown for a week, citing several states of emergency due to weather.<\/p>\n
The telco switched off its 3G in Rotorua and Palmerston North on January 15 and planned to pull the mobile service from the rest of its network today.<\/p>\n
Chief executive Mark Callander said the telco made the decision in an abundance of caution while communities in Northland, Thames-Coromandel, Hauraki, Bay of Plenty and Tair\u0101whiti continue to recover from the impacts of recent weather events.<\/p>\n
\u201cCurrently, there are official states of emergency across the North Island and the risks of further slips and road closures.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we think that the impact of the 3G shutdown is unlikely to cause any issues, we are taking a safety-first, customer-focused approach,\u201d Callander said.<\/p>\n
When is the plug being pulled?<\/p>\n
All three telcos are shutting down their older 3G mobile networks to concentrate on 4G and 5G \u2013 meaning some older phones won\u2019t work<\/a>, including for emergency calls, and some security and health alarms<\/a> won\u2019t work.<\/p>\n Spark\u2019s shutdown won\u2019t begin until March 31.<\/p>\n 2degrees\u2019 shutdown \u2013 outside of the already shuttered Rotorua and Palmerston North 3G networks \u2013 will now take place in a week\u2019s time, as things stand.<\/p>\n One NZ\u2019s shutdown timetable from here is:<\/p>\n February 3: Otago and SouthlandFeb 10: Canterbury, West Coast, Tasman, MarlboroughFeb 17: NorthlandFeb 24: Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Gisborne, Hawke\u2019s Bay, Taranaki, WhanganuiMarch 3: ChristchurchMarch 10: AucklandMarch 17: Wellington<\/p>\n 2%-3% still on 3G<\/p>\n Following an industry-wide publicity campaign, Spark says the number of devices on its network that rely on 3G has halved.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re now just 2% of all devices on our network still relying on 3G,\u201d a Spark spokeswoman said this morning.<\/p>\n That equates to about 50,000 devices, from phones to gadgets like Kindles and health and security alarms that rely on 3G cellular connectivity.<\/p>\n There are also some parallel-imported \u201c4G\u201d phones that don\u2019t support the VoLTE technology that Spark, One NZ and 2degrees use for 4G calling.<\/p>\n A One NZ spokesman said: \u201cLess than 3% of all devices on our network, including IoT, still rely on 2G\/3G\u201d following a 65% decline in data use and 77% fall in 2G\/3G use over the past year.<\/p>\n To see if your phone will work after your provider\u2019s 3G shutdown, text 3G to 550. <\/p>\n Spark 3G shutdown in numbers<\/p>\n Spark also released stats on 3G, 4G and 5G usage, comparing June 2025 (when the 3G shutdown date was announced) with January 2026.<\/p>\n 3G data usage down 50% and only 0.25% of Spark\u2019s total network data traffic3G voice usage down 70%4G data usage up 17%5G data usage up 37%Over 110,000 Spark customers have used the free SMS device-checkerOver 10,000 Spark customers have checked their device compatibility onlineTop unsupported devices upgraded: iPhone 6 and Huawei Y5Device most commonly upgraded to:\u00a0Galaxy A06 5G<\/p>\n Resources<\/p>\n Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald\u2019s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rural Connectivity Group is a joint venture formed by Spark, One NZ and 2degrees to cover rural…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[36297,147410,16891,534,665,138,115,2841,147411,141960,15974,78,16572,6371,5812,111,139,69,24808,5270,96405,384,2063,59676,24996,7538,544,1361,3382,82855,4998,6730],"class_list":["post-255040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-2degrees","tag-3g","tag-able","tag-amid","tag-around","tag-business","tag-calls","tag-country","tag-eliminating","tag-emergencies","tag-emergency","tag-in","tag-joined","tag-joins","tag-make","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-older","tag-one","tag-pausing","tag-people","tag-phones","tag-possibility","tag-reaction","tag-shutdown","tag-some","tag-that","tag-using","tag-various","tag-weather","tag-would"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}