SPK- Spark NZ (TELCO)

[Snoopy]

Not sure I understand. In the old days it was a (rather high) fixed fee for having the connection plus any toll calls you made.

Today it is (depending on your plan) some monthly payment including mainly free national calls plus some toll calls plus whatever data you use. The total however is for most users less than it used to be in the good old telecom days. So - sure, the Income streams for Telecom have changed, but the total didn't increase.

I think you do understand. It was I who did not make my point clear. I did not mean to suggest that Spark was on a growth path attracting more and more revenue from retail phone customers. I only meant to suggest that other streams of revenue were opening up. So it wasn't a given that as land line connections dried up, individual customer revenues would go down.

Not sure I can follow this argument either. In the good old days the subscriber of the landline paid a fixed fee plus tolls. If somebody else (from overseas) called you, than the overseas telecom typically would as well contribute to the cost of this call (unless they had some mutual agreement basically waving each others cost).

Yes I always had the impression there was a 'mutual forgiveness of costs' in both directions.

These days the owner of the plan pays a fixed monthly fee plus tolls (being data and toll calls). If somebody from a different provider calls you their provider may or may not (depending on the agreement between the respective providers) pay for parts of this call. Again - given that people receive calls as well as make calls, this is typically quite revenue neutral - the more the operator receives from other operators for incoming calls, the more they normally would have to pay these very operators for outgoing calls form their own network.

I just had a look at the Spark mobile plans on offer: $59.99 with unlimited talk, covering NZ and Oz is the cheapest 'pay monthly' plan. No mention of any extra charges when you connect to Vodafone or 2 degrees.

Alternatively the Spark copper landline is $55.20 per month. Local calls are 'free' (the good ol' kiwishare?), but toll calls are 24cpm (capped at $3) and calls to mobiles are 59cpm (capped at $5).

Personally, I have a Vodafone prepay mobile account. I got sent a text saying all the per minute charges are going up, so now might be a good time to transfer onto a monthly plan. I can't remember what the new charge rate per minute was. I just remember it was high enough that a medium length chat would empty my 'emergency account balance'. So I only use my mobile for texting now, I don't make voice calls.

I must admit I did not realise that Spark have dropped all their 'per minute' charging. So that changes the argument somewhat. The angle I was coming from was that 'we' landline dinosaurs have to pay a per minute charge to ring a cellphone. But you 'embracing the future' cellphoneites do not have to pay per minute to phone the landline, ringing the other way.

Packages for the user existed in the good old days (at least in the part of the world I am coming from) like today - this is just a way for the respective Telecom to maximise their revenue considering that running a telecommunication network costs exactly the same money whether it is in use or idle.

If you embrace the idea that telecommunication networks cost exactly the same whether it is in use or not, then because the landline callers to cellphones are 'paying per minute', but the cellphone callers to landlines are not, then effectively the landline customers are subsidising the cellphone customers (from a retail customer perspective anyway).

SNOOPY

[Zaphod]

A few random thoughts:

• Spark has 16 datacentres around the country. In August they announced they would be adding capacity at their Takanini datacentre which will (apparently) make it the largest in New Zealand once completed. How much business they will lose to AWS is anybody's guess ...

It's worth noting that the Takanini datacentre is a co-lo* which is a service that the Amazon DC's don't provide. Probably not a major money spinner these days. We've used it in the past.

*For the benefit of those outside of the industry, this means a "co-location" which allows a customer to place physical servers and network infrastructure into the provided racks and attach to a very high bandwidth network connection.

[Zaphod]

Not sure I can follow this argument either. In the good old days the subscriber of the landline paid a fixed fee plus tolls. If somebody else (from overseas) called you, than the overseas telecom typically would as well contribute to the cost of this call (unless they had some mutual agreement basically waving each others cost).

Yes I always had the impression there was a 'mutual forgiveness of costs' in both directions.

Based on the thread above, I presume you both are referring to what is termed the 'terminal fee', which is a charge incurred by the telco that places the call from the the telco(s) that receives and connects the call to the destination. This occurs on the local cellular network too, although is not obvious from the existence of uncapped plans.

[bull....]

spark breaking down from its 2 yr sideways channel, t/a target suggests at least a 50c drop if confirmed

[mcdongle]

Ive been wondering if they are going to raise prices above inflation

[Mr Slothbear]

Ive been wondering if they are going to raise prices above inflation

they would do so with great risk to market share.

NZ telco industry incredibly competitive and cost or penalty to switching is non existent.

[JAX]

Ive been wondering if they are going to raise prices above inflation

Just got an email from Spark telling me my plan is changing and from now on they wont be paying for Spotify - I need to pay for that myself - albeit 50% off. So a price increase.

So that triggered me to look at the plan I was paying $60 a month for calls / texts (unlimited) and a measly 4gb of data + Spotify

Swapping to Kogan (a white label of Vodafone) and will pay $165 per year for unlimited calls and texts and 15gb data so $14 bucks a month for 3x the data and I guess Ill just pay for Spotify direct.

Pretty dangerous game playing with peoples plans - I should have checked sooner!

[dobby41]

Swapping to Kogan (a white label of Vodafone) and will pay $165 per year for unlimited calls and texts and 15gb data so $14 bucks a month for 3x the data and I guess Ill just pay for Spotify direct.

Pretty dangerous game playing with peoples plans - I should have checked sooner!

Interesting way of doing it.
That's $160 for the year.
That's 1.5GB data per 30 days (not 15G) so 1/3rd the data, not 3x.
To get back to 4G of data you'd need 2x 1.25G data packs as $11.90 each so another $24 - still less than the $60 (though there are other, better, prepay plans with Spark).
Still an interesting deal.

[BlackPeter]

Just got an email from Spark telling me my plan is changing and from now on they wont be paying for Spotify - I need to pay for that myself - albeit 50% off. So a price increase.

So that triggered me to look at the plan I was paying $60 a month for calls / texts (unlimited) and a measly 4gb of data + Spotify

Swapping to Kogan (a white label of Vodafone) and will pay $165 per year for unlimited calls and texts and 15gb data so $14 bucks a month for 3x the data and I guess Ill just pay for Spotify direct.

Pretty dangerous game playing with peoples plans - I should have checked sooner!

Just made the move to Kogan (they had a X-Mas special - one year for half the price you are mentioning) for me and wife ... - and it worked smooth and easy. Immediately operational after swapping the SIM and number transfer (during the working week) took 4 hours.

So far quite good, and soo much cheaper ...

[BlackPeter]

Interesting way of doing it.
That's $160 for the year.
That's 1.5GB data per 30 days (not 15G) so 1/3rd the data, not 3x.
To get back to 4G of data you'd need 2x 1.25G data packs as $11.90 each so another $24 - still less than the $60 (though there are other, better, prepay plans with Spark).
Still an interesting deal.

If you need more data - there are 48GB for $250 pa or 180GB for $330 pa.

No need to buy the additional data packs if you know in advance you need lots ...

https://www.kogan.com/nz/buy/kogan-m...e-starter-pack

But hey - I probably should not make too much advertisement for Sparks competition on this thread :

Did I mention that Kogan / Vodafon reception is in many places better than Spark (well, at our place it definitely is ...)?