In 2022, the Government signed a historic agreement granting Māori a share of radio spectrum suitable for 5G mobile services and a 20% share of all future commercial radio spectrum rights.

It took decades of work by many figures in Māoridom to get to that point, following a Waitangi Tribunal ruling in 1986 that Māori had a legitimate claim to radio spectrum resources for broadcasting to help preserve te reo Māori.

One of the people who helped get the deal with the Government over the line was Antony Royal, who, after a long career in technology and governance roles, is now the chief executive officer of Tū Ātea, the organisation tasked with making the best use of that 5G spectrum allocation.

Country’s first commercial private 5G network

Tū Ātea just struck a deal with Wellington’s CentrePort to build the country’s first private 5G network, which will help the busy port offer faster, lower-latency connectivity across the port precinct as a more efficient method than relying on Wi-Fi or public mobile networks.

On this week’s episode of The Business of Tech, Royal explains how Tū Ātea is planning to shake up the telecommunications market following its acquisition of broadcast and telecoms infrastructure provider Broadtech in 2023.

“One of the things that we said right from the very start is we think there's an opportunity to develop private 5G networks,” says Royal. 

“We are not going to go and try and compete and do another 2degrees,” adds Royal, referring to the genesis of New Zealand’s third mobile network operator and early Māori involvement in getting the telco off the ground. Royal served on the 2degrees board in its startup phase.

“We've done that job. What we want to do now is look at some of the other ways that we can help improve productivity, and health and safety using wireless technologies and, in particular, 5G wireless technologies. So that was our starting point.”

Find out about the decades-long effort to have Māori rights to a share of the radio spectrum recognised and the career pathways Tū Ātea is creating for young Māori in engineering and telecommunications. 

The Business of Tech is sponsored by 2degrees for Business. Subscribe on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

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