2026 Digital Priorities report shows work
needed
New Zealand’s tech leaders say the
nation’s digital strategy problem is not infrastructure,
but putting networks to work.
Presenting the
organisation’s 2026 Digital Priorities report, Tuanz CEO
and panel chair Craig Young summed up its findings: “We
have world class infrastructure but we can’t rely on those
strong foundations anymore. We actually have to do something
with it.”
Execution is key
Shannon Harris,
managing director of HP New Zealand, echoes the idea. She
says there is “no shortage of technology… but we have to
execute… we have to do more and we have to do it
faster.”
Harris says organisations are rethinking
costs and architecture, questioning “how flexible or
inflexible we’ll be over time”. That opens the door for
hybrid models, edge computing and a bigger role for local
infrastructure providers.
If I had
to pick one priority, it would be capability. I think, the
ability of people and organisations to use technology well.
We need to prioritize national digital capability in
schools, in tertiary education, in workplaces and across
leadership teams, because the top digital nations seem to
combine strong technology and strong people capability. And
they are the leading economies that we we want to be
like.Liz Gosling – AUT
CIO
Security
Security and
resilience add another layer of concern. AUT CIO Liz Gosling
noted “the weaponisation of AI in the cyber security space
keeps me awake at night.”
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For One New Zealand CEO
Jason Paris, scale is the issue. He says New Zealand
produces strong digital use cases, but they are not widely
shared or adopted. “Little old New Zealand is doing
absolutely incredible things that no one knows
about”.
Comment: We have the
technology
There’s a clear message in this year’s
Tuanz Digital Priorities report: New Zealand does not get
all the value from its network.
We have excellent
fibre coverage in our towns and, while gaps remain, there is
high-quality connectivity almost everywhere. We
attract growing data centre investment. Yet, so far, in
economic terms the infrastructure investment is
underperforming.
Tuanz found that by international
standards New Zealand has low mobile data usage, slow cloud
adoption and what it describes as “citizen
disconnect”.
These are not new problems. Tuanz
foreshadowed them in last year’s report. And they were
being discussed, albeit with a different framing, as the
fibre network was being built.
But now there is a
sense of urgency. AI is moving from its experimental phase
and switching into production. The world appears to be
entering a new technology era.
We’re only going to
extract value from AI and cloud if we can use these
technologies more intelligently. We need better
execution.
New Zealand must create, recruit and retain
the talent to make that happen.
Fibre IM Review: Who
pays for network growth?
Submissions on the Commerce
Commission’s 2027 Fibre Input Methodologies (IM) Review
show a divide between infrastructure owners and a leading
retailer over how investment risks and costs should be
shared with New Zealand consumers.
It boils down to
who gets to pay for an extended fibre network.
Input
Methodologies are the framework of rules used by the
Commerce Commission to set the maximum revenue and quality
standards for fibre companies.
Chorus: Streamlining
for growth
Chorus largely supports the Commission’s
push to simplify the regulatory framework but seeks more
flexibility in capital expenditure (capex). As the initial
fibre rollout concludes, Chorus proposes merging “connection
capex” with “base capex” to reduce administrative
overhead.
The company also disputes the proposed $30
million threshold for individual project reviews, suggesting
$10 million instead to ensure smaller, complex projects are
properly scrutinised.
Chorus also argues for a
“lighter regulatory touch” on government-funded expansions,
claiming reduced red tape will ultimately lower costs for
consumers.
Enable seeks stability and shared
risk
Christchurch-based Enable generally aligns with
Chorus but prioritises regulatory stability. Unlike Chorus,
Enable supports retaining the “Integrated Fibre Plan” over a
more generic asset management format.
Enable argues
that service rebates—payments made to retailers when the
network fails—should be treated as a “cost of doing
business”. This would allow fibre companies to recover
those costs through regulated pricing rather than absorbing
them as losses.
Spark wants competition
protected
The sole retail submitter, Spark, is highly
critical of settings that might allow “perverse” costs to
reach customers. Spark argues the proposed “Willingness to
Pay” test for network expansion overstates benefits by
ignoring existing broadband options like 5G or
satellite.
Spark also warns against “connection
incentives”. These are payments used to lure customers to
fibre. It fears they could unfairly disadvantage alternative
technologies. Spark says consumers should not be forced to
subsidise network expansion or the penalties incurred by
providers for poor service performance.
For
background:
New
Zealand fibre networks: A guide to how UFB
works
One NZ signs API agreement with
Vodafone
One New Zealand has signed a deal with its
former parent company Vodafone, giving it access to Network
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
Telecoms
sector network APIs support activities such as real-time
anti-fraud verification, device status checks, secure
authentication and digital identity solutions.
Murray
Osborne, general manager of One NZ’s Infrastructure
Partners says: “This agreement helps us to unlock the full
value of our network through globally standardised
APIs”.
He says this “Opens new frontiers in app
development across sectors including financial services,
media and e-commerce.”
With it, developers will be
able to integrate capabilities such as number verification,
SIM swap detection, and network-based authentication to
improve security, help to tackle fraud and deliver smoother
customer experiences.
In other news…
Tait opens Chile
office
Christchurch-based Tait Communications has
opened an office in Santiago, Chile to serve customers in
South America. The company says it has partners in Chile,
Peru, Argentina and Ecuador. One of its main focuses in the
region is communications for mining and public safety
applications.
NCSC: cyber harm falls as New
Zealanders improve defences
Research published by the
National Cyber Security Centre found the number of people
who suffered harm from an online threat fell from 36 percent
in 2024 to 27 percent in 2025.
NCSC chief operating
officer Michael Jagusch says this shows people are taking
action to protect themselves.
The research, undertaken
by The Research Agency, found more people using password
managers and two-factor authentication on their main online
accounts.
This time last year
Tuanz released
the
2025 edition of its Digital Priorities report calling on
government to take a stronger, more co-ordinated approach.
The same idea was embedded in this year’s report, see the
story higher up this page. It’s a perennial
problem.
Five years ago in Download Weekly
A
ruling at the Auckland District Court found Vodafone
guilty of nine Fair Trading Act charges over its FibreX
brand. FibreX was the name Vodafone used when it
rebranded its HFC network to compete with the UFB fibre
network. The service is currently being
retired.
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Freelance journalist.
Auckland-based Bill Bennett writes technology and business stories that are directly relevant to New Zealand readers.
His emphasis is on telecommunications, but he also covers other aspects of technology and business. You can find his features in the New Zealand Herald and hear him regularly on RNZ Nine to Noon and the NZ Tech Podcast.
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