1Jun 09

2 Degrees outside: Brrr!

Posted by Juha Saarinen @ 0:00 1 comments

As I'm outside, enjoying the unseasonably cold weather that almost finished off much of NZ's population, I stumbled across a New Zealand Communications cell site in Milford:

It's a big beast, about six feet tall, humming away quietly with an RF Hazard Area within, as labelled.

The antennas for the cell site are high up on a solid steel mast:

Milford is a solid, middle-class suburb, but it's not spared the urban curse of tagging as is evident from the site. The gear is all Huawei, and it appears the equipment was originally destined for Avondale Racecourse, which is miles away towards South Auckland.

That's all I can tell you really. NZ Communications hasn't, as far as I know, let anyone apart from Optus roamers onto its new network, so no idea how well the service, branded 2 Degrees, works. It's taken NZ Comms, or Econet as they started out as, some eight years to get this far. To be honest, it's quite a surprise to see that there's actually a network now. We'll see what happens in a few months time, when 2 Degrees is said to launch. August will tell.

(Images credited to Juha Saarinen/ZDNet.com.au)