[Starlink] Starlink direct-to-device in NZ

[Ulrich Speidel <u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz>]

For those of you watching the D2C (aka D2C etc.) aspect of Starlink 
(i.e., Starlink to mobile phones) , One NZ has been a Starlink partner 
here in NZ for a while.

There were signs early on that One NZ had perhaps bitten off a bit more 
than they could chew - the list of "eligible" phones was very short and 
grew only slowly, One NZ stores had rather homeopathic doses of very 
expensive stock of these available at the time, and you needed to commit 
to a rather expensive and long-term subscription to get satellite 
service. Which, given One NZ's rather impressive terrestrial coverage 
here probably wouldn't have been accessed by >99.9% of their local users 
in a day.

They'd started advertising well ahead of launch. The NZ Commerce 
Commission reckoned that this was a bit rich and asked them early on to 
stop: 
https://www.comcom.govt.nz/assets/pdf_file/0013/321124/Stop-Now-Letter-to-One-NZ-Group-Ltd-5-July-2023.pdf

Then the NZ Commerce Commission took One NZ to court, filing criminal 
charges for breaches of the Fair Trading Act. They didn't mince their 
words: 
https://www.comcom.govt.nz/news-and-media/news-and-events/2024/comcom-takes-legal-action-over-one-nzs-100-coverage-claims-for-spacex-service/

In April 2025, roughly half a year in, One NZ proudly emailed its 
customers and informed everyone that: "More than 70% of eligible 
customers have connected to the network so far, and over 10,000 TXTs are 
already being sent through space daily." I guess that was more of an 
indication of how few eligible customers there actually were, that 
nearly 30% of them hadn't managed to escape terrestrial coverage so far, 
and the 10k texts / day probably spoke for themselves in the context of 
a company that holds nearly 40% market share in a market of nearly 5 
million mobile users.

Alas, with SpaceX launching more satellites with cellular payload over 
time, capacity grew. As did the list of eligible phones on One NZ's 
website. Slowly but surely.

In July 2025, One NZ extended the service to phones on prepay plans, 
including the plan I'm on ... as long as I'd have an eligible phone. My 
phone isn't an "eligible" one however (model not on the list and not 
bought from One NZ or one of their resellers), and I wouldn't have 
considered spending hundreds on a model for the few minutes a year I 
spend outside normal mobile coverage here. But alas, I guess it would 
have caused a few more folk out there to use the service.

But maybe that was a step too far for them. Today's inbox yielded:

> From 1 Dec, One NZ Satellite TXT will no longer be included in your 
> plan at no extra cost. It's included on select Prepay Plus plans now 
> or a new Prepay Plus Add-On will be available soon, with an eligible 
> phone. See: one.nz/satprepay
The link takes me to a page saying they're working on getting prepay via 
satellite working. It'll be NZ$5 (about US$2.90) a month on top of one's 
normal prepay plan. Want it now? Well my current prepay plan is $20 a 
month and I'd need to up that to a $50/month. Or wait for them to get it 
working, at which point I could upgrade to a - wait there's a fishhook 
here - $22 / month plan to be eligible to pay the extra $5 for the 
satellite service.

They're also working on getting the data service working. Which will 
support a limited number of mostly messaging apps only by the looks of 
it. Different flavour of TXT I suppose.

But here's the caveat already:

> To ensure all One NZ customers with an eligible plan and phone are 
> able to access One NZ Satellite TXT, we may have to actively manage 
> the capacity that the One NZ SpaceX satellite network can currently 
> handle, and our Fair Use Policy 
> <https://one.nz/legal/policy/fair-use/?srsltid=AfmBOor_oP_opxEqzqjNFQzgdDo9LhrgxcFtH2fM53_BGE1K_9ScjYj5> 
> will apply to your use of this service.
Makes one wonder whether they'll ever see a return on their marketing 
campaign (especially in the context of their COMCOM case).

-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)

The University of Auckland
u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz 
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
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