The SME Stream

Starlink has quickly become the hero – and potential hazard – of rural broadband in New Zealand.
In a few short years, Elon Musk’s low-Earth orbit satellite service has gone from curiosity to default option for many farms, small towns and remote communities that never made it onto the fibre map. It’s racked up 58,000 subscribers and generated around $100 million in revenue last year, delivering broadband access via satellite with a self-install version that has amassed many raving fans.
In a country where the “last 5–10%” of connections have always been the hardest and most expensive, Starlink looks like the magic bullet.
But in the latest episode of The Business of Tech podcast, Alex Stewart – the 21-year-old founder of Greater Wellington wireless ISP WombatNET – suggests we risk ceding sovereignty to one or two US companies when it comes to rural connectivity.
Stewart’s company is one of dozens of small, regional wireless internet providers that have spent the past decade building towers, stitching together backhaul and hand-holding customers who were too far from the cabinet, tower or fibre trench to interest the big players. Now, those same operators are watching customers churn to Starlink at a rapid clip, undermining the economics of infrastructure that taxpayers helped fund.
Too much of a good thing?
Stewart argues this isn’t just a competitive problem. It’s also a resilience problem. In the interview, he explains how some rural communities now rely on Starlink for almost everything: home and business broadband, school connectivity and even the backhaul that keeps local mobile towers online in emergencies. If Starlink suffers a prolonged outage, changes its commercial terms or decides New Zealand is no longer strategic, large swathes of rural connectivity could be collateral damage.
What’s most startling is what Stewart discovered when he went digging into the Government’s thinking. Through 28 Official Information Act requests to ministries and regulators, he found very little evidence of cohesive, forward-looking analysis of these risks, despite international warnings about monopoly, displacement and sovereign risk in satellite broadband markets.
In our conversation, Stewart lays out how spectrum policy and lack of capital are boxing local wireless ISPs into a corner, why he believes current policy settings are accelerating a de facto monopoly, and what a more balanced model, including wholesale satellite access and better use of existing rural infrastructure and radio spectrum resources, might look like.
Listen to the full interview with Alex Stewart on The Business of Tech on iHeartRadio, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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As SpaceX announces they’re going public, in-house experts Jacqui Newman and Susannah Batley break down the initial public offering (IPO) process and SpaceX’s upcoming Nasdaq debut. Discover how companies come onto the exchange for the first time—and what’s different about this historic IPO.
Find out what the SpaceX offer document reveals, including a total addressable market target almost equal to the entire GDP of the United States. The team evaluates Elon Musk’s iron grip on the company’s leadership, which US pension funds have called the “most management-favorable governance structure” in modern market history. And with retail seeing an unusually high 30% allocation from SpaceX, Jacqui and Susannah explain how institutional roadshows can create information asymmetry for retail investors.
Plus, why Musk faces a unique 366-day lockup period before he can sell a single share.
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Energy security. Financial security. International security. Social cohesion.
These are the government’s priorities for Budget 2026 that Prime Minister Christopher Luxon laid out earlier this month.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis says this Budget will lay out a clear plan. Where the country is now, where we're headed, and the road we'll take to get there.
So, what should we look out for? How does this position the Coalition for the election? Will the spending be worth the thousands of public sector jobs being cut to pay for it?
Today on The Front Page, University of Otago Honorary Research Fellow, Dr Michael Swanson, is with us for a pre-Budget 2026 chat.
Follow The Front Page on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
Host: Chelsea Daniels
Editor/Producer: Richard Martin
Producer: Jane Yee
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The Reserve Bank Governor is feeling good about her captain's call to keep the Official Cash Rate unchanged at 2.25%.
Anna Breman made the final decision after the six-member Monetary Policy Committee she chairs was evenly split on whether to hike the rate.
Breman says she understands the argument for hiking but told Mike Hosking she doesn't think now's the right time.
She says financial markets have already tightened quite a lot, and the economy is slowing down, which will reduce pressure on inflation over the medium term.
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A Former Finance Minister expects this year's Budget to invest in health, education, and defence – with cuts elsewhere.
Budget 2026 is being unveiled tomorrow, opening up the Government's books and detailing when a return to surplus is possible.
Steven Joyce told Mike Hosking re-prioritisation is the story of the week, and he's backing further cost-savings in the public sector.
The Government aims to cut around 8,700 jobs in the public service by mid-2029, with savings set to be re-invested.
Joyce told Hosking we've had an increase in public servants since 2017, but outcomes aren't significantly better.
He says many believe it has just increased the churn, and number of meetings.
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