One NZ and 2degrees have asked regulators for permission to pool the radio gear that runs their mobile networks into a single jointly owned company, a change that would leave Spark as the only carrier in the country still running a national mobile network entirely on its own. The two companies announced the proposal on Thursday 27 August 2026, giving the new business the holding name RANCo.
The radio access network is the part of a mobile network most people never think about and pay for every month. It is the active equipment bolted to the towers and rooftops, the antennas and electronics that turn a phone call into radio waves. Under the proposal, One NZ and 2degrees would each hand their radio equipment to the new entity, which would own, manage and operate it and then sell network services back to both parents under separate wholesale agreements. In the words of the joint statement, the arrangement would “make more efficient use of existing infrastructure and reduce unnecessary duplication, while maintaining competition between One NZ and 2degrees”.
The pieces that stay in separate hands are the ones the companies argue keep them apart in the market. Each would keep its own spectrum management rights, its core network, its fibre backhaul and its satellite arrangements. Both would keep selling to customers as independent retailers.
Incoming One NZ chief executive Nick Judd said sharing radio networks was already common overseas. “This proposal would deliver real benefits for customers by enabling us to deliver better connectivity. This includes faster access to new technologies such as 6G and improving overall network resilience,” he said. Judd also said it would let capital go towards product innovation, customer experience and core network capability rather than duplicated hardware, and would lower energy use over time. Judd was named to the top job in July after Jason Paris stepped down following almost eight years as chief executive.
2degrees chief executive Mark Callander made the geography argument. “New Zealand can be a challenging country in which to build mobile networks,” he said, adding that the plan would create room to extend rural and regional coverage and add capacity in the cities. “Instead of duplicating investment where it adds little customer value, we can invest more effectively in extending and improving the network.” He was firm that the retail fight would carry on. “2degrees and One NZ will remain independent businesses, competing hard for customers on price, products, service and innovation,” he said.
Nothing happens quickly. The proposal needs clearance from the Commerce Commission and from the Overseas Investment Office, along with a set of internal reorganisation steps, and the companies are aiming for completion in the first half of 2027. The overseas investment test is in play because of who owns what. One NZ sits under NZX-listed Infratil, while 2degrees is held by Voyage Digital, a vehicle owned by Macquarie Asset Management and the Australian superannuation fund Aware Super.
This is less a bolt from the blue than the last step in a long drift towards shared hardware. As telecommunications journalist Bill Bennett set out this week, 2degrees and the company then known as Vodafone signed an infrastructure sharing deal in 2020 that put 2degrees radio equipment on roughly 200 rural One NZ towers, and 2degrees extended the approach in November 2023 to close out its national coverage. All three carriers already share single sets of equipment on remote towers through the Rural Connectivity Group, and the steel itself was sold years ago to the tower companies Fortysouth and Connexa. What is left to share is the electronics, and that is what this proposal is about.
The scale of the duplication is easy to underrate. When Newswire pulled the Radio Spectrum Management register in July 2026 to build our telecommunications and 5G mapping work, it showed 5,743 unique cell sites around the country, of which 2,656 carried a 5G licence, or 46 per cent. One NZ accounted for 1,133 of those 5G sites and 2degrees 680, against 887 for Spark. Combined, the two companies proposing to merge their radio networks hold roughly twice as many 5G sites as the carrier that would be left outside the arrangement. The same pull showed about 49 per cent of sites in Auckland and Wellington carrying 5G against roughly 18 per cent at the top of the South Island. You can see how the towers, fibre and cables fit together in our interactive map of New Zealand’s telecommunications network.
The timing puts the Commerce Commission in an interesting spot. In March this year the Commission recommended scrapping the mobile termination rules that have applied since 2010, on the basis that the market no longer needs them. “The rules introduced in 2010 helped create a level playing field that allowed 2degrees to grow into a strong third mobile network. With competition now well established between three national providers, regulation has done its job and can step back,” Telecommunications Commissioner Tristan Gilbertson said at the time. Five months later, two of those three providers want to run one radio network between them.
The companies will argue that competition in mobile has moved off the tower and onto price, plans, service and satellites. The Commission’s own annual telecommunications monitoring report published on 29 June 2026 made much the same point, noting that virtual operators keep expanding and that direct to cell satellite services are pushing coverage past the edge of the terrestrial network. That report also found Starlink now supplies 27 per cent of rural broadband connections, making it the largest rural provider in the country. Mobile is no longer the only way to reach a farm gate.
There are questions the Commission will work through anyway. Coverage has been a real point of difference between the carriers, and a shared radio network narrows that to whatever each company buys back at wholesale. Shared equipment also means a fault at a site can take out both carriers at once, which matters in a country that has spent years arguing about network resilience after storms and quakes. And a wholesale business jointly owned by two competitors is a structure regulators look at closely, because the price it charges its owners sets the floor under both retail businesses.
For customers, nothing changes for at least a year. If it clears, the plan should mean fewer towers carrying two sets of near identical gear, faster upgrades where only one carrier has bothered, and a mobile market where the physical network is treated much the way fibre already is, as shared plumbing rather than a weapon.
Would you rather have three separate mobile networks competing on coverage, or two shared ones that reach further into the places phones still do not work? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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