New Zealands’s Spark adds third EPC to mobile network

New Zealand operator Spark has added a third evolved packet core node to its mobile network to accommodate surging data traffic and add more resiliency.

The company said it has deployed a new node in Porirua to allow it to meet strong demand for mobile data. Its customers have already downloaded 34 petabytes of data in the first eight months of the year, compared to just 6.9 petabytes over the same period last year.

In addition, the additional node will allow the operator to shift and re-route traffic in the case of outages, particularly those caused by natural disasters or emergencies.

“Rapid advances in wireless capability, together with the uptake of mobile apps and video streaming means we see people on the network for longer and downloading more data than ever before,” Spark general manager for networks Colin Brown said.

“We want to ensure we are giving our customers the best wireless experience possible. The installation of this third node is important because our customers expect an ‘always on’ service and so we need to ensure we have the capacity and resiliency to provide this.”

Spark is also the only New Zealand operator to date to have deployed 4.5G technology on its network, including carrier aggregation, 4×4 multiple input multiple output (MIMO) and 256 quadrature amplitude modulation (256 QAM).

The company has so far switched on 4.5G in areas of nine cities and towns, and plans to add more towns to the footprint within the next 12 months as a stepping-stone to 5G adoption.