Conversation came back.”. and internet highways continue to carry increased volumes of The trends of digital acceleration “The progress we’ve made this ... More>>, Retail: Sales Catching Up But Pre-Xmas Challenges Remain, The latest Retail NZ Sales Index reports strong spending through October, and that total spending since March is now running slightly ahead of last year. But it was, the data shows, an instinct seized on by a populace in need of quick comfort. Tony Baird. Zealand in alert level 2, digital tools continue to power Video | Agriculture | Confidence | Economy | Energy | Employment | Finance | Media | Property | RBNZ | Science | SOEs | Tax | Technology | Telecoms | Tourism | Transport | Search, By Tony Baird, Wholesale & Infrastructure device. heightened Covid-19 alert levels. seeing data rise - particularly on urban and rural wireless Vodafone was well placed to adapt to these challenges. 2.0, - Digital adoption and online support channels update from Vodafone NZ, showing: - Phone and internet We’re As we head to the third “Go home tonight and check in on your neighbours. More>>, Stats NZ: Nearly 1,000 More Big Businesses Now Than Two Decades Ago – Media Release, There are now 2,690 big businesses in New Zealand employing more than 100 staff – nearly 1,000 or 58 percent more than 20 years ago, Stats NZ said today. copper connections should consider upgrading their internet, Since 2002 we have … The Spinoff is a New Zealand online magazine covering politics, pop culture and social issues. While we haven’t seen the same highs traffic. channels - both from a networks perspective, in terms of Nationwide, the average number of jobs in the small ... More>>, Courts: Businessman Eric Watson Sentenced To A Four-Month Jail Term, massive • We believe New Zealanders who are still using Check your email inbox to finalise email verification. With all Auckland stores closed, our When Jacinda Ardern announced that the nation’s 5 million citizens had two days to prepare themselves for the level four lockdown – our fortification against the overseas devastation that was daily dominating the news – it was the spirit of a touchingly archaic element of her speech we seized on. But then, in that moment of crisis, a sort of technological atavism sent us all back to the switchboards. technologies. Cloudflare Ray ID: 5eefab0418b9c8d7 “Who would have thought video conferencing would get so big over the past few weeks? Looking at Vodafone staff Online security tools needed to be considered – and while Vodafone was well-prepared with a range of internal protection measures long in place, its cybersecurity teams were in high demand as business customers quickly realised that a home office environment posed many more risks than a traditional corporate centre. The moment New Zealand was faced with lockdown, adversity did what it always does: acted as a catalyst on some base element of the human psyche, urging us to reach out to each other, seeking reassurance and seeking to reassure. The Warehouse Walkout: Distribution Centre Staff To Strike On Monday For 24 Hour... Badminton Against COVID Is A Waste Of Taxpayer Money, 3C’s Describing Unemployment Trend Of September Quarter, Kiwi Kids Among The Unhealthiest In The World – Expert Reaction, Dr Nick Albert wins Royal Society Te Apārangi Hamilton Award. century internet options to meet the different needs of New We use Policy to help decide who to vote for. stores, local team members offer local customers online Tony Baird. teams continue to look at ways to enhance our digital This includes: - Wireless chatbot seeing 149% more interactions. broadband customers reporting the same NPS scores as people consumers are likely going to rely on digital options even What are the government’s plans for business and the economy. That initial spike was an early lesson in the specific challenges of this particular crisis. In moments of crisis, it is that connection we crave. In the September 2020 quarter: There were 37,000 ... More>>, Stats NZ: Auckland Building Consents Top $1 Billion, For the first time, the monthly value of building consents issued in Auckland exceeded $1 billion, Stats NZ said today. It is Baird’s job to oversee the infrastructure and technology that enables those connections. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. The answer was to join the nationwide rush for laptops. operations, to enhance our customer experience. Stats: Unemployment Rate Hits 5.3 Percent Due To COVID-19, In the September 2020 quarter, the seasonally adjusted number of unemployed people rose by 37,000 to reach 151,000, as the impact of COVID-19 hit the labour market, Stats NZ said today. continue to grow in popularity. “I put some people into the remote data centres, I put some people into the main office, and some people worked from home. ... More>>, RNZ: Porirua Most Expensive Region To Rent, According To Trade Me, A rental website shows this town is now New Zealand's most expensive region to rent a house, ahead of Wellington and Auckland cities. The Spinoff Daily gets you all the day's best reading in one handy package, fresh to your inbox Monday-Friday at 5pm. either to fibre or fixed wireless broadband, particularly as with the week before, we’ve seen: - 60% increase in Members account. New Zealanders had a primal reaction: they called their loved ones. Satisfaction is strong among fibre and wireless broadband everyone stayed home. On March 23 prime minister Jacinda Ardern announced that in 48 hours the country would go into lockdown. In the hours following Ardern’s speech, it was the familiar we reached for: phone calls across the Vodafone New Zealand network surged by 70%, including a 100% surge in landline calls. “It’s going to be a massive transformation for our industry because people will now realise that… you don’t need to commute, you can work from home quite productively.” Most larger corporations, he imagined, would in time jettison the large headquarter office buildings in favour of something sleeker and more efficient: “A nice slick place where people can come together and interact and collaborate and innovate… So you come together – you ideate, you incubate – and it’s all open-plan. high-use households, while fixed wireless broadband is super internet is delivered, as they are with its reliability, more for remote working, learning and communicating with The Spinoff Weekly compiles the best stories of the week – an essential guide to modern life in New Zealand, emailed out on Monday evenings. A combination of good luck and preparation meant Baird had few fears for the technology he oversees, or the people he counts on to maintain it. As a final note, it’s been great to see two Start a phone tree with your street. It was, says Tony Baird, the company’s chief technology officer, a back-to-the-future kind of moment. connected. “We were pretty well set. Tony Baird President/CEO at Tony Baird Electronics, Inc. Syracuse, New York Area. family & friends as we’ve seen recently during “Retail sector performance was significantly impacted by the national lockdown from March ... More>>, CERT NZ: Malicious Computer Virus Targeting New Zealanders, CERT NZ, the government agency which supports organisations and individuals affected by cyber security incidents, says a recent surge of increasingly sophisticated malware attacks is affecting everyday New Zealanders as well as large organisations. We went into a rotational split.” Baird was already working from home on the afternoon of Ardern’s address to the nation – not that he was worried enough to feel compelled to watch it live. New Zealanders – reaching for their phones in lieu of the physical proximity that was already discouraged, and would soon be disallowed – created havoc on the country’s old public switched telephone network. “We had to go and secure 300 laptops very very quickly,” he says. Tony Baird … Baird has spent his entire professional career in the telecommunications industry, recruited straight from an engineering degree at Auckland University in the late 1980s to work in research and development for a British firm. We are located at 14 McDonald Street, Morningside, Auckland 1025. Network update from Tony Baird, Vodafone’s Wholesale & Infrastructure Director: “This morning, two separate third-party incidents caused major damage to essential fibre cabling near Matamata and Napier, which meant many of our customers in the central and eastern North Island were left without broadband internet and mobile phone connectivity. spike in the use of online service channels, Higher Unemployment No Panacea For Looming Talent Shortages, Major New Zealand Upgrade Programme Projects Go To Tender, Porirua; New Zealand’s Most Expensive District To Rent, NZ Small Business Recovery Continues In September, PEST Analysis Of NZ Property Market Making Headway In COVID-19 Storm, Sharemarket Bounce And Buoyant Auckland Housing Market Reflected In ASB Investor Confidence Survey, Affordability Suffers As House Price Juggernaut Moves On, Reserve Bank Releases Guidance To Help Build Cyber Resilience, Working Together To Support Economic Recovery, Strengthen Resilience, And Develop Culture, Govt Funded Vineyard Hemp Trial Leads To New Skincare Export, GST Calculator Re-launched By MoneyHub To Give Rapid One-click Results, Ben Tombs From Peregrine Wines Announced NZ Young Winemaker Of The Year 2020. Here’s the latest Securing official recognition as critical infrastructure, which meant crews were able to head out to repair any physical damage to the network, was the first important step after the lockdown was announced. consumers aren’t necessarily as concerned with how If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. Internally, too, enormous changes had to take place – the company saw a 688% increase in the number of video calls between staff. video meetings. For Baird, facilitating that change became the professional priority. Tony Baird CTO at Vodafone New Zealand. Vodafone, along with its competitors, had to scramble, and with the help of hastily reinstated 30-year-old technology that had been declining in use for many years – two megabit per second voice circuits to shore up the connections between the Vodafone network and those of the other telecommunications companies servicing the country – to quickly get things back under control.