“Wi-Fi connectivity was problematic because containers on the port interrupt the signal, acting like a Faraday cage or blocking shield. This disrupts our people’s ability to maintain operations and impedes efficiency.

“Our investigations across the ports industry internationally indicated that a private 5G network was the way that some other organisations were addressing the same problem.

“We contacted a variety of providers to seek their interest, and Tū Ātea said they were keen to partner with us. They were our preference in the end as they could offer both the spectrum we needed without having to get our own licence and the 5G network capability we were seeking.”

CentrePort will test a setup with three private 5G celltowers in a pilot due to go live about August.

“We will then assess if we have the coverage at the right level or need more towers for optimum connectivity,” Delaney said.

The Wellington Regional Council-owned port declined to put a dollar figure on its upgrade, citing commercial sensitivity.

Proven its chops

Tū Ātea had already proved its chops by providing a private 5G network for last year’s Waka Ama NZ Secondary School Nationals on Lake Tikitapu (the Blue Lake) near Rotorua.

“That’s not a black spot. It’s a black hole,” said Tū Ātea chief executive Antony Royal (Ngāti Tamatērā, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāpuhi).

The private 5G network allowed the event to be livestreamed, despite the area’s lack of mobile coverage.

Royal, a former 2degrees director, says Tū Ātea is looking for more events work — including in urban areas. It’s also investigating how private 5G networks could play a role in relief efforts after a natural disaster.

He says private 5G networks were used extensively during the Paris Olympics, allowing the organisers to sidestep congested public networks and offer guaranteed coverage at high speeds.

5G network slicing creates multiple virtual networks within a single physical 5G network.

Each “slice” can be customised to meet specific use cases with different latency or throughput requirements, allowing various services to run more efficiently and securely on the same network infrastructure, Royal says. In Centreport’s case, it will be targetted at mission-critical apps.

Bulking up

Tū Ātea has about 120 staff today, after rapidly bulking up by acquiring two network engineering firms last year.

Its genesis was in spectrum politics. In 2019, the Labour-led Government established the Māori Spectrum Working Group, with a pledge that it would receive free 5G spectrum.

The deal sidelined — but did not settle — the longstanding WAI 22424 Treaty claim on radio spectrum — paving the way for a 5G spectrum auction.

The Government ultimately decided not to put the airwaves on the block. Instead, in 2022, the Crown said it would directly allocate One NZ, Spark and 2degrees chunks of 5G spectrum at no cost (in return for spending $24m on top of existing budget for expanding mobile access in rural areas). At the same time, the Crown signed an agreement for iwi to receive 20% of future national commercial spectrum allocations, at no cost. The agreement also included funds totalling $75 million for various spectrum-related iwi initiatives.

The following year, Mbie confirmed One NZ, 2degrees and Spark would get 80MHz of 5G spectrum each (with more on the way as bands are made accessible), while iwi would get a 100MHz slice.

The pan-iwi Māori Spectrum Working Group, created as the vehicle to drive the spectrum deal, became Tū Ātea, the Māori Spectrum & Telecommunications Service, with Tū Ātea Ltd created as its commercial arm in 2023.

In February last year, Tū Ātea bought Auckland-based Broadtech Group and its subsidiary JDA for an undisclosed sum. The 50-staff-strong Broadtech offered broadcast, networking services and telecommunications engineering for customers including Freeview and Whakaata Māori (Māori TV) and various utilities, health and maritime clients. Post deal, became Tū Ātea Network Services.

In mid-2024, Tū Ātea bulked up further by acquiring (again for an undisclosed sum) one of its contractors, Galaxy Telco, billed as “a specialist rigging and complex Ran [radio area network] and DMR [digital mobile radio] solutions nationwide and in the Pacific” that had “delivered large numbers of 3G, 4G, and now 5G sites”.

And in November last year, Tū Ātea inked a partnership with Mavenir, a US telecommunications firm focused on 5G equipment that uses open software.

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.