Malcolm Dick’s high-level representations to get more competition into the mobile market may yet pay off as the government clears the way for a fourth competitor to muscle in.
Ministers agreed in March that Spark, Vodafone and 2degrees would be charged $166 million in total to renew most of a key chunk of radio spectrum they use to deliver 3G and 4G mobile services - a deal that would see most of their rights renewed for 20 years.
However, the government has also made room for a fourth operator to utilise spare radio spectrum - a move that might allow Dick’s Blue Reach to enter the market. He has said that his plan was for a wireless internet business that would also offer a service akin to a mobile phone service.
The news also comes as Dick’s other big bet looks set to ramp up. Dick, who along with fellow Rich Lister Sir Eion Edgar and French telco executive Rémi Galasso, is one of three main backers of the Hawaiki Cable.
The cable, which opened mid last year, links Australia, New Zealand and the US, and is New Zealand’s third major internet pipe to the outside world.
NBR understands Dick has put somewhere between $50m and $60m – or about a third of his wealth – into the company.
It is a 43-terabit cable system – about eight times the current capacity of Spark NZ’s Southern Cross cable. Hawaiki recently announced plans to upgrade that to 67 terabits per second using technology from a US-based company. That will give Hawaiki the lowest cost for per bit of data transmitted, the company said.
Along with former wife and business partner Annette Presley, Dick co-founded the CallPlus Group in 1996, which grew to become the country’s third-largest telco before it was sold to Australian telco M2 (subsequently merged into Vocus Group) in 2015 for $250 million.
2018: $170 million