Jason Paris: One New Zealand CEO on the company starting testing its Starlink satellite to mobile service

One New Zealand has been given the green light to begin testing of their Starlink satellite to mobile service over the next 10 weeks.

It'll allow texting and messaging from many places currently without coverage.

Currently 40 percent of the country has no mobile coverage, and the telecommunications company says satellite to cell plays a vital role in keeping people connected.

One New Zealand chief executive Jason Paris joined Francesca Rudkin.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
One, New Zealand has been given the go ahead to
start testing of their Starlink satellite to mobile service here
in New Zealand. So forty percent of the country currently
has no mobile coverage and One in New Zealand z
says satellite to sell plays a vital role in keeping
people connected, and the CEO of One New Zealand to

(00:20):
Jason Paris, joins me, Now, good.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Evening, good. How does this technology work?

Speaker 3 (00:28):
So it's think the cell towers that you see around
your neighborhood. Some people like them, some people admittedly. What
happens is they basically get strapped to satellites, and then
those satellites get strapped to rockets, and then the rockets

(00:49):
get launched three hundred and fifty kilometers up into space
into lower orbit, and then those satellites they get distributed
into a constellation of other satellites. It may beam signals
back to your mobile phone back in little old New

(01:11):
Zealand to allow you to be able to make a
text message, make a phone call, or use or use data.
So it's quite extraordinary technology that we're bringing.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
To the New zeal On, Jason, how many satellites do
you need?

Speaker 3 (01:27):
So it depends on what you want to do. So
if you want to text, you need about three hundred,
which we're on track to have by the end of
the year. So these rockets with satellites on them are
being launched every week. To do voice, you need fifteen hundred,

(01:47):
so oney five hundred of them. The reason you need
more with voice is you need constant coverage. When you've
got when you're making a phone call, it can't drop
where when you got when you're doing a text message.
If I sent you to a text and it took
a minute to send and for you to receive it,
you wouldn't know that. And if then you receive and

(02:09):
send a text message, expect to me, I wouldn't know
that it took an extra a minute to do that.
So you need three hundred with satellites to do text messaging,
and there'd be a delay of a few minutes. But
you need a lot more than that if you want
to do our voice, which is about twelve months later.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Testing is going to kick off very shortly. What does
the testing look like?

Speaker 3 (02:34):
So we have done a bunch of testing so far.
Already we have sent text messages and we've tested also
the kind of we've altered in some video calling, but
we now need to do that at scale, and so
we just got to approve all this suite from the FCC,

(02:54):
which is the US regulator, to be able to launch
this service for a testing perspective in New Zealand. So
from the next week we'll do ten weeks testing. We'll
do that testing on a whole bunch of different devices,
so a range of different smartphones. We'll use those smartphones

(03:16):
smartphones all and run across the country in different places,
just to make sure that before we launch this to
everyone that we're confident that it works on every device
that we say it can and all the locations that
we've said it would.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
How much coverage will this give New Zealand.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
So just to explain again, the satellites when they are
up in lower orbits, they've beam back down from space
to New Zealand. So the advantage that you have with
this coverage from space is that it covers the higher country.

(03:59):
So in a satellite flying through space at twenty seven
thousand kilometers an hour, that's how fast they are going,
and there's another one right behind it, they are constantly
beaming signals back down to New Zealand. So at the
moment we've got forty percent of the country that doesn't
have coverage, that doesn't have three G or four G

(04:21):
or five G coverage. This will sort that and it
will also mean that right out to see So our
license is twelve nautical miles off the coast of New Zealand.
It means even if you're in a fishing boat, then
you will be able to have a smartphone in your
hand see the sky and you'll be able to send

(04:44):
a text message. Once we've been demonstrating and finish all
the testing, that seeing the sky is an important another
important one, Francisca. So at the moment we know that
if you can see the sky service works. We know
that it actually works if you're in a room and

(05:05):
you've got you and you're by the window. We need
to do a whole bunch of other testing inside and
outside buildings, the bridges and dense bush all that type
of stuff to make sure that when we say to
someone if you're a remote part of New Zealand and
you need to you need to get in contact with

(05:26):
someone that you can.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
When will the service be on offer to the public.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
So in the early in the New Year, that the
plan was to launch this in twenty twenty four. The
delay he wasn't actually from a technical perspective, So the
rockets has been launching on time. All of the satellites
are working well. The testing that I said it was

(05:52):
afore work pretty well. But there were a few complaints
from Talco's in the United States who thought that the
satellite service might interfere with their existing networks, and the SCC,
which is the US regulator, how to take its time

(06:12):
to work through that. That's now been sorted and we
can move into testing. Our government, by the way, has
given us approval to launch this service many months ago,
so there's been no similar concern from from New Zealand
that the way that we're deploying this technology will interfere

(06:32):
with existing with existing networks.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
Thank you so much, Jason for talking us through that.
That was CEO of One New Zealand, Jason Paris.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
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