
Air NZ trialling Starlink internet on domestic flights
Air New Zealand has started trialling wireless internet on a domestic plane using Starlink satellites.
The airline said from today, passengers flying on ZK OXE, one of its A320 domestic aircraft, would be able to access high-speed, low-latency internet, with an ATR-72 turboprop joining the trial later this month - a world first.
It said Wi-Fi would be provided free of charge during the trial, with passengers able to browse, access social media, stream or play games.
Starlink - owned by billionaire Elon Musk's company SpaceX - uses low Earth orbit satellites to provide internet coverage across the world.
"Being the first airline in the world to trial Wi-Fi on a turboprop aircraft is a proud moment for us, Air New Zealand chief digital officer Nikhil Ravishankar said.
"Our goal is to explore the potential of this technology and understand how it can enhance customer journeys."
Air New Zealand said it was in the testing phase of Starlink's onboard connectivity and sought to understand how it performed in real-world conditions, while gathering customer feedback.
"[Customer] feedback will help guide our decision-making as we consider connectivity options for our domestic fleet," Ravishankar said.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


NZ Herald
a day ago
- NZ Herald
Air NZ's New York to Auckland service grounded by fuel leak
Auckland-bound travellers heading out of New York with Air New Zealand have been stranded in the Big Apple after the aircraft being used was grounded with a fuel leak. It's the latest disruption to the airline's route, after the cancellation of services both ways earlier this month because of bad


Scoop
4 days ago
- Scoop
Download Weekly—Winter, game updates see UFB traffic surge
Data in demand as temperatures drop June 8 saw a new record for daily data use on the Chorus network. The fibre wholesale company says it moved 30 petabytes of data as gamers downloaded the latest Fortnite update. Per-connection downloads averaged 671 GB in June. That's a four percent increase compared with 642 GB in April. At the top end of the curve, close to 19 percent of customers downloaded a terabyte of data. This coincided with the arrival of cold, wintry weather and the Big Fibre Boost which saw customers on standard plans move from 300 Mbps to 500 Mbps. Fortnite has form when it comes to Chorus network data surges. Fibre uptake Fibre uptake continued to edge up in the quarter, by 0.1 percent. This brings the total uptake to 72.1 percent across the 1,532,000 addresses passed by Chorus' network. The growth was faster in areas connected during the second phase of the UFB network build with the total in UFB2 areas climbing from 61 to 62 percent. Chorus says another 11,000 users signed up for the entry level Home Fibre Starter plan which increased its speeds from 50/10 to 100/20 Mbps in June. This is a product aimed at less well-off homes. Two-thirds of the users signing up for the plan were new connections. During the quarter, 15,000 copper lines were disconnected. The total has now dropped to 92,000. Chorus expects there will be no copper lines in its fibre areas by the middle of next year. Starlink promises terabit capacity next year A Starlink network update says SpaceX aims to launch its third-generation satellites in the first half of 2026. The update says these will 'add an order of magnitude improvement in capacity compared to the current satellite'. Specifically, the new satellites will deliver a terabyte per second of downlink capacity and 200 Gbps of uplink capacity. It says this is ten times the downlink capacity and 24 times the uplink capacity of today's second generation satellites. On top of that, Starlink says the third-generation satellites will use next-generation computers, modems, beamforming and switching to improve the network's latency. The new satellites will connect to each other with optical links for additional backhaul. Starlink says it is aiming for 20ms latency. While Starlink promises a lot, there is a catch. SpaceX has optimised its satellites to launch on the company's Starship rockets. They are the ones that keep exploding. Busy time for appointments Spark network simplification leader Steven Lawrence is the new chief technical director for Next Generation Critical Communications. During his time with Spark, Lawrence worked on the telco's contribution to the Public Safety Network's cellular roaming and priority services. He also had responsibility for Spark's delivery of 111 emergency services. Crown-owned research network operator Reannz has appointed Jo Perez as head of corporate services and chief financial officer. Perez has previously worked for New Zealand Rugby, Department of Corrections and Trade Me. Former Trustpower and Mercury chief executive Vince Hawksworth is now working as a power and energy strategy advisor for Datagrid. Phone market flat in Q2, likely to stay that way for 2025 The analysts don't agree. Canalys says the phone market 'marginally declined' in the second quarter of 2025. Counterpoint says the market was up two percent. IDC says it was up one percent. Taken collectively, we can assume there's not much going on. All three agree Samsung is the top-selling phone brand. Apple is in second place and Xiaomi in third. While Samsung and Apple grew faster than the overall market, Samsung grew the most. Canalys thinks the market will remain flat over the whole of 2025. IDC hints at growth without offering anything specific. Counterpoint makes no comment on the subject. The analysts all note the current uncertainty over tariffs is having an impact on the market. There's a sense that, if or when. the US stops its on-again, off-again tariff talk, the market is poised for take-off, but don't expect that to happen this year. Sign up for Bill Bennett telecommunications + technology from a New Zealand perspective Subscribe No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. Tuanz releases Connecting Aotearoa report Tuanz — Connecting Aotearoa Chorus has released a report based on the Connecting Aotearoa summit in Hamilton. (Download Weekly reported on the summit in May.) Like the conference, the report aims to answer the question: Why can't 100 percent of New Zealanders be connected? With one in five households still not connected, there's a pressing need to bring everyone who wants to be online into the fold. While there are issues with rural connectivity and digital skills, the cost of connecting remains the most intractable issue. In other news... Auckland firm IQ Hive could enable more MVNOs —Reseller News South Island cool climate makes it ideal for data centres —The Press New Zealand farmers falling behind on technology transformation—Farmers Weekly 'Senior industry figures I've spoken to are increasingly sceptical about whether this government can deliver on anything that requires actual strategic thinking in the tech space.'—BusinessDesk (paywall). Analyst skewers Spark's Agile strategy Eden Bradfield takes no prisoners in his withering overview of Spark's performance. The story is behind BusinessDesk's paywall. Among the jabs, he connects the company's embrace of Agile to its sagging share price. Agile is a software development methodology. It doesn't necessarily translate well to other businesses disciplines. In 2018, Spark announced it was adopting Agile companywide. I asked then-CEO Simon Moutter about this. He said half of Spark's capital was spent on software. Hence Spark was a software company. Kind of. It sounded plausible. Spark owned Lightbox, a streaming TV business. There was Spark Sport and Morepork, the home security business, Qrious, a data analytics division and Mattr, focused on identify and verification software. All could be viewed through a software and digital services lens. Since then, Lightbox, Spark Sport and Morepork have left the building. To the outside world today's Spark looks less like a software company. Yet the commitment to Agile remains. Like others, Bradfield raises the prospect of a private equity buy out. It's possible. If that happens, how long do you give Agile? Download Weekly five years ago Spark plans to retire PSTN in Devonport and Miramar by Christmas. The move will affect around 1000 customers. Enjoy Download Weekly? Feel free to pass this email on to your colleagues. Have your say. Subscribers are able to comment on any newsletter or story on the website. Just scroll to the bottom of the page. Reader emails are also welcome. The Download Weekly is supported by Chorus New Zealand. Winter, game updates see UFB traffic surge was first posted at Bill Bennett 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. Bennett's The Download Weekly here. If you want to support his work, you can make a donation to his PressPatron account.


NZ Herald
5 days ago
- NZ Herald
Air NZ Dream Seats: Ambassador Simran Kaur from Friends That Invest on dreams and ‘failing upwards'
This month, Kaur adds another feat to her impressive resume as one of Air New Zealand's Dream Seats ambassadors. Launched last week, the campaign aims to help Kiwis achieve their dream by offering free flight tickets to a destination that will help them get closer to their professional goals. Its six ambassadors, including Kaur, Dame Valerie Adams and Josh Emett, will also each personally mentor two Kiwis. Ambassadors Josh Emett and Simran Kaur at the launch event for Dream Seats. Photo / Air NZ 'I'm very, very excited to mentor ... I love teaching, I love talking to people, and I love helping them figure out a plan for how to make their dreams come true,' says Kaur, who grew up around educators. She was even teaching as a kid, running makeshift tutoring classes in chemistry for her friends at the temple - because she enjoyed it, she says. This wasn't always Kaur's dream. Like so many of us, her dreams changed over the years. At one point, it was to become a fashion designer, which, by her own admission, is 'comical' to think about now. 'My friends know me as the worst fashionable person,' she laughs. Despite the lack of fashion sense, her self-belief never wavered. 'I didn't go, do I dress well?' Society tends to frame the act of going after one's dreams as a brave thing to do. But Kaur doesn't think courage has much to do with it. Or even hard work. 'When you're younger, you have such strong dreams and very little doubt in yourself. And I feel like as we get older, the dreams are big, but the self-doubt starts to grow.' Simran Kaur says her biggest mentors are her parents. People can start to internalise things that may never have been said by asking themselves, 'Who am I?' and 'What can I do?' The investor explains. When Kaur was at school, she wrote a speech about the importance and power of failure. She remains steadfast in that belief today. Many successful people, in her view, 'fail upwards'. What that means is they try again smarter, not harder. Rinse and repeat. She also spoke about failure when asked what it takes to achieve dreams. 'I think it's a mixture of luck and not doubting yourself, and just being okay in failure because you will fail at times, but you just keep going. '[If] you just keep trying smarter, you eventually get to whatever it is that your dream is.' While having the right mindset is crucial, so is broadening your horizons with experience. That is to say, travelling may present one with opportunities they may never have received if they stayed in their comfort zone. For Kaur, it played a 'monumental' role in shaping her professional career. She recalls one of her first international trips when she went to the United States for a TEDx Talk at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania to discuss the importance of women investing and how empowering it is to have financial literacy. She met so many people. The trip, she says, 'blew my mind'. 'Being able to travel has just opened so many doors and [it let me meet] such amazing women around the world.' Kaur's brand is popular, having sold more than 100,000 books, reaching 100,000 newsletter subscribers and over 10 million downloads of the Friends That Invest financial education podcast. Simran Kaur with her best friend Sonya Gupthan. Together, they host the popular investment podcast Friends That Invest. But her appeal is also diverse. Kaur's audience spans many cultures, experiences and backgrounds, and yet, she says there is a common thread. They ask her: Are values around money similar in every culture? She's learned that it is. 'We all want to be able to not worry about money. We all want to be able to look after our family. We all want to have a rainy day fund. And those concepts are just universal,' says Kaur, adding that travelling opened her eyes to the fact people are more similar in money values than they are different. If mentees expect Kaur to drip-feed solutions, they will likely be disappointed. Her approach to mentorship is less about being someone with all the answers, and more about being 'a sounding board' and 'someone to hold [mentees] accountable to those dreams". And she can't wait. 'It's gonna be amazing to meet them and to hear what their dreams are and just to allow them to expand their view on themselves and expand their ability to achieve those dreams.' Varsha Anjali is a journalist in the lifestyle team at the Herald. Based in Auckland, she covers travel, culture and more.