Paul Spain: Tech commentator and Gorilla Tech CEO on Commerce Commission taking action against One NZ over 100% mobile coverage campaign

The Commerce Commission are taking action against One NZ over their ‘100% mobile coverage’ plan and Starlink rollout. 

The watchdog believes the advertising campaign breached the Fair Trading Act, saying customers were under the impression that coverage would include data and voice calling – not a text only service. 

Tech commentator and Gorilla Tech CEO, Paul Spain tells Heather du Plessis-Allan the case seems over the top, given the CommComm hasn’t chased other companies whose products have not met all claims. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now there is some criticism of the Commerce Commission for
the legal action it's taking against One New Zealand. The
ComCom has decided to press charges against One New Zealand
because One New Zealand has claimed that once it hooks
up with SpaceX, it will provide one hundred percent mobile
coverage launching twenty twenty four. Now, apparently that is misleading
because it won't be one hundred percent because you will

(00:21):
not possibly be able to get coverage when you're inside
a building, inside a car, or underneath tree coverage, which
feels some say, maybe a little pedantic. Paul Spain is
a tech commentator and Guerrilla Tech CEO and with US.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Now, Hey Paul, Hey you Heather.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Is that a bit pedantic from the ComCom?

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Well, it does seem a bit that way to me.
I mean, I think if there are so many things
that you could pull companies up on and look, I'm
a long term one end ZED customer and I you know,
and I do some other business with them, So maybe
I'm a little bit biased, but you know, it just
it seems a little bit over the top to me.

(00:58):
You know, you could you could look at every electric
vehicle that's sold in the country that has a range
on it. You know, none of them can actually ever
ever meet that range, and there's technical reasons behind it.
They could go after Tesla, who have been selling their
full self drive cars, and they originally promised that they
would deliver that capability to customers by the end of

(01:20):
twenty nineteen. We're in twenty twenty four. It still hasn't
been delivered. I haven't heard the Commerce Commission go after
that one. So yeah, I don't know why they've why
they've chosen in this case. It does seem a bit
over the top.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Every really doesn't. Then what do you make of the
fact that the Commus Commission has received eight complaints about
this advertising, two of which at least came from rival
Spark in two degrees.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
That doesn't seem like.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
A lot to go on.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
It's not a lot to go on. I mean, I
would tend to think if you were a customer that
had been hard done by this, and you had decided
to move your entire business or your family onto One
end Z and that they couldn't deliver, I'd be I'd
be pretty confident that if you got got in touch
with One end ZED and say hey, you know, this

(02:10):
isn't what we're expecting that that they would they would
probably make things right. So I'm a little unsure on
this one. I got to say.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Now, there has also been a warning to one New
Zealand that's coming from people who understand technology that getting
into bed with Elon Musk is maybe a little bit
of a risky thing because he says he's going to
do something at the start of the year, and it's
not going to happen at the start of the year.
What do you think, well, that.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
That comes back to my Tesla example. I think I
think we've seen plenty of examples where where where Musk
will will lay out a timeline and they're they're very,
very hard to achieve. That said, when you look at
some of the things that that his companies have achieved,

(02:53):
they're they're often you know, well ahead of anybody else
in the market in terms of what what they achieve when,
but yeah, not not necessarily on track with the timelines
and sometimes out by five years, like the full self
driving capability and counting. Yeah, fair enough.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Paul on the idea that just because I find this fascinating,
right on the idea that once this all kicks in,
you will be able to get tech coverage. And look,
it's going to be slow and it's going to be
a bit crappy, but you'll be able to get tech
coverage absolutely everywhere in the country and you'll never be
able to escape your phone. This is the future for us, right,
we need to get used to this. It's going to
be ubiquitous and you'll be contactable at all stages. Do

(03:33):
you think that in the future, though, we will start
to learn to turn ourselves offline and actually have time.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Out, Ah, one hundred percent. I mean, I think a
lot of us are already trying to do that, to
varying degrees of success. Right, And I think you know,
I used to enjoy the long international flights up to
North America and ah, this is the one time I
get offline, or you know, going going going out to

(04:01):
a holiday destination where there was no coverage. But you
know those things, those you know, situations have got less
and less. Yes, there's a you know, there's a few
airlines that don't have Wi Fi in their international flights
and so on. Yeah. Look, I think you know, there's
there's some there's some disciplines that we have to we
have to build in and the same way, uh, you know,

(04:22):
with with the way our youngsters use technology, we have
to you know, we set some guidelines and some frameworks
around those things. So yeah, I think that there's very much,
you know, something that'll probably you know, become more and
more common for people to to draw some lines around
when they have their devices on and off.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
God, I love it, Paul, Thank you very much. Paul Spain,
tech commentator and Guerrilla Tech CEO. And I reckon we'll
turn it. We'll start to learn our turn to turn
our phones off and be unapologetic about it, just be like, well, sorry,
I didn't I just wanted to have some time out
for like five days, just completely out.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
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