As HMAS Canberra, the fleet flagship of our transtasman cousins, sailed along the New Zealand coast and into Cook Strait last week on its way to berth in Wellington, its navigational radar interfered with internet services in Taranaki, Manawatū, Nelson and Marlborough.
The blocking of wireless internet and radio services early last Wednesday morning did not last long for some of those regions, though it appears the South Island outages lasted hours, with the ship offshore for most of the day.
Once complaints from providers and users were raised with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Radio Spectrum Management, the New Zealand Defence Force was notified, which in turn let its Australian counterparts know what was happening, prompting them to change the radar’s frequency.
It appears the radar impeded the 5-gigahertz wireless access points which bridge the wired and wireless networks onshore. Interference from the radar on the Canberra tripped the switches on the access points and knocked them offline, an inbuilt precaution to stop wireless signals affecting aviation radar used in New Zealand airspace.
MBIE has explained that the country uses different bands of the radio spectrum for different purposes, some of which are shared and available for anyone’s use, including the bands for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The interference from the ship was in one such band.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, Newton says — in this case, the Australian navy knocking out New Zealand internet.
It is somewhat unfortunate that the ship’s visit was meant to cement goodwill and the sister-city relationship between Wellington and Canberra. And it seems ironic, worrying actually, that if the most friendly of visitors can black out parts of the nation, what might less well-disposed visitors be able to do?
Even without a great deal of technological knowledge, it also seems surprising that such a cutting-edge naval system would be using the same parts of the spectrum as everyday Wi-Fi users on land.
One of the biggest issues facing the viability of our country over the next several decades is the robustness of existing infrastructure, the cost of its replacement and an ongoing commitment from political parties to build projects which may take several terms of government to complete.
New Zealand’s leaders are poor at looking beyond the three-year horizon and planning for what may be required by the next generation or generations.
The glacial pace of the construction of Dunedin’s new hospital is a good example of this. Once upon a time, we had the nous and determination to build major developments, though often at the expense of the environment. Today we quite rightly think more about the environment, but we seem to have lost that expertise for big builds.
Taranaki broadband company Primo’s managing director, Matthew Harrison, told RNZ internet and phone providers had been asking for a broader spectrum for years to ensure frequencies did not have to be shared.
"This is a prime example of what can happen when we’re not ... afforded the same spectrum as what some of the bigger players may be, like Starlink and Spark," he said.
Telecommunication Users Association chief executive Craig Young agrees there are weaknesses in the radio spectrum and says rural and regional users are especially vulnerable to such interference.
Clearly something needs to be done to ensure such failures do not occur again. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says Defence Minister Judith Collins is finding out more about how it happened, and says it was clearly not a "deliberate" action from those on the ship.
Lessons have been learned, and now action needs to be taken to stop something like this happening.
After all, people’s lives and livelihoods are now inextricably linked with the internet.
