Everything about Amuri.net feels solid, understated, and sustainable. Entering the grounds of its North Canterbury network operations centre I actually drive past without spotting it. Understated, in that there is no identifying signage – just a cluster of unglamorous white buildings. Solid, because these are seriously strong and professional structures. Sustainable, because Amuri gained fame among WISPs by being the only telecommunications operator to stay on line in Kaikoura throughout the 2016 earthquake.
Amuri.net covers a large block of Canterbury from Kaikoura, south to the Rangitata River, west to the Southern Alps. The site count is relatively modest – just 40. This is because unlike some other WISPs, owner Chris Roberts believes in having a smaller number of big, sophisticated sites each serving a large customer count. Consequently a typical Amuri.net hilltop site features a hut rather than just a cabinet, reflecting the impact of being 1000 meters or more above sea level with a lot of snow to deal with. And if Chris or a staff member get caught out by weather when visiting a site, at least they have ready made overnight accommodation!
Amuri.net owner Chris Roberts in a corner of the data centre.
Chris Roberts first started taking an interest in wireless Internet around 2005 when he was working on a dairy farm. There was no broadband.
He knew what could be done, having worked previously for lines company Orion, so he started with buying an ADSL connection from the local Chorus exchange and transmitting it aerially to his first site. With all his neighbours wanting connections ADSL proved not to have enough capacity, so he quickly changed the source to Snap Network in Christchurch – at that time an independent network company which since became part of 2degrees mobile.
Then about 2008 FX Networks (now Vocus) came through Culverden with fibre optic cable. After the frustration of trying to get the connectivity Chris needed from Spark (Telecom), FX was a breath of fresh air. Soon Amuri.net had all the connectivity it could wish for and has never looked back.
As we drive through the countryside Chris points out the various farms and workers’ cottages. A typical local dairy farm has 4 to 6 houses on it to cater for farm workers. A few farmers throw in Internet with their tenants’ rent but most tenants pay their own way. Chris is very “hands on” and points out one by one those who are Amuri.net customers and those who are not.
“We don’t do contracts,” he tells me. “The big phone companies we compete against insist on a two year contract and a credit check. Many of the farm workers are immigrants with no credit history. We take them on trust. They’re good payers. Sometimes it’s an advantage to be local and not to look too big.”
Amuri.net is among nine WISPs that has won tenders from Crown Investment Partners to expand its network as part of RBI2, the second stage of the government’s Rural Broadband Initiative. Chris points out his site at Doctors Hill south of Culverden. At an altitude of around 1000 metres that is among 30 sites in for either a new build or an upgrade as part of that development. This one will be upgraded from a cabinet to a hut, allowing more space for modern equipment that is now coming on stream.
It takes a team to run a business. As well as Chris and his wife Noelle, they have a head technical leader, two field technicians, and a customer service operator. Two additional people are being brought in for the RBI2 build.
Amuri.net also operates a data centre – a backup facility where medium and large users can store their computer files in case of loss in a disaster. “We’re just the right distance from Christchurch – far
enough away that we’re not going to be part of the same disaster, but near enough that the customer can get up here in an hour or two to retrieve computer files if necessary.” He seems to be right as there is an impressive stack of co-located servers sitting securely in the racks.
Solid, understated and sustainable seem like good words to describe not only Amuri.net but its owner also.
Happy Amuri.net customers Dan and Mandy Shand at Island Bay Station.
Dan and Mandy Shand still remember the times just a few years ago when they had to set the alarm for midnight so as to send an email from their 140-year-old homestead at Island Hills.
Such was the competition for the limited capacity on dial-up at the end of their ancient North Canterbury copper lines that the small hours were the only time an email could stand a chance of going through.
“We asked Telecom what our options were. They said we should drive up and down between here and town with a radio slightly off the station, listen for crackling noises, and then ask each farmer to please earth his electric fences properly,” Mandy recalls. “They were no help at all.”
“At that stage we were getting established with a four-day walking track as a commercial enterprise for tourists,” Dan said. “We had the farm to run, and an apiary. We’d just returned from Sydney where I’d worked as a graphic artist – I could have kept that job and worked from here if I had the ability to send and receive big files.”
Finally, along came Chris Roberts and Amuri.net. Island Hills Station became his 6th customer.
“Suddenly we could market the walking track properly,” Dan recalls. “The use of online marketing led to us getting some good articles for promotion. Then we went live with online bookings – people could book 24/7 whether Mandy and I were online or not.”
The walking track is like a DoC track but privately owned. Once the visitors started coming Dan and Mandy were up and running. They were doing 3000 bed nights a year, and those visitors were going to other attractions and cafes in the region as well. Everybody won.
“We couldn’t have done any of this without Amuri.net and the WiFi,” Mandy says. “The Internet access led to us being able to buy the farm and start a honey business. We used the Internet to recruit staff.
More recently the entrepreneurial couple have started a flourishing farm and apiary software business involving collaboration among 5 software developers around the world. A row of clocks on the wall shows the time in each of their home cities to help plan Skype video calls.
“I don’t think people understand that an Internet connection is a way of generating cash,” Dan says. “Without WiFi we wouldn’t get workers – and if we did, we wouldn’t retain young staff including the WOOFERs who have become really important to us.”
“These days you can live without a mobile phone, but you can’t live without the Internet.”
Mike Smith’s enthusiasm is infectious. Ask him a question about the background to his wireless ISP business, Ultimate Broadband, and he’s away. And rightly so – he’s built a highly successful enterprise out of nothing in just a few years. He’s enabled thousands of rural Canterbury residents to get socially connected, run their businesses better and connect their kids to the school network from home. And he’s close to launching a new farm management package to consolidate digital era efficiencies on the region’s farms.
As we motor across the plains south of Christchurch, Mike describes the scope of Ultimate’s network. From historic Tai Tapu on Banks Peninsula Ultimate covers pretty much all the area south to Timaru, east to the coast, and west to the Southern Alps foothills. “We cover most of the land mass from the Port Hills to the main divide – Lord of the Rings country,” he tells me. And aided by a generous share of the government’s RBI2 (Rural Broadband Initiative) programme which they won in a tender process they’re continuing to push out in the directions of Oamaru, Kurow and the Mackenzie Country. There’s an opportunity to double their footprint and significantly increase their customer base.
Customer Service Officer Patricia Paul works on some potential new business.
To serve all this area Ultimate operates 86 commercial repeaters and 60 private repeaters. The difference is that a commercial repeater is owned by Ultimate and used to service any number of customers, whereas a private one has generally been funded by a customer and normally serves only that customer.
I ask whether, given that WISPs operate by bouncing radio signals from hilltop to hilltop, the flatness of the Plains is an advantage or a challenge. “Both,” he responds. The advantage is access to a lot of fibre optic cable to feed the network. The downside is there are a lot of properties without line of sight to a suitable high spot, so it is necessary to use rooftops and other lower spots to fill the gaps, leading to reduced bandwidth capacity and increased demand for scarce radio spectrum. But all those issues are surmountable.
Mike’s background is as a salesman with a technical bent but he’s at pains to downplay his engineering skills. In an earlier career he worked as an Account Manager for Spark (then Telecom) selling mobile and fixed line solutions to small businesses. “I loved the wireless stuff,” he says. So about 9 years ago he started in business on his own, beginning with a small wireless network in the Orari Gorge. It took three years to build the relationships with customers and another year to build the network. Gratifyingly, most of those customers are still with Ultimate.
One thing led to another. Putting his strong sales and business skills to good use he started what is now Ultimate about 2009. With a great deal of help from neighbouring WISP Chris Roberts at Amuri.net Mike developed systems, hired staff and built wireless sites. The brand “Ultimate” was introduced in 2012 and the business has never looked back.
Ultimate’s One Tree Hill site towers over the nearby farmland.
By now we’ve left the road and the big Isuzu 4wd is climbing steeply up a farm track overlooking Banks Peninsula towards Ultimate’s One Tree Hill site. Mike doesn’t seem to have reduced speed much and despite the vehicle handling the terrain effortlessly I get tossed around like Scotty in the old Barry Crump Toyota ads. But the view from the summit make the bruises worthwhile. The solidly-constructed site impresses with its collection of radios and 4×250 watt solar panels.
Bumping back down Mike tells me the secret of selling WISP services. “You can’t beat the old town hall meetings”, he says. Last week Ultimate held one in McQueens Valley near Halswell which 25 people attended. Mike did a spiel as CEO and then introduced his sales team to do the deal. Most attendees signed up on the night and then spread the word to neighbours who couldn’t attend, at which stage just about everyone in the community became a customer – in that instance so successfully that the local RBI2 site build will be brought forward ahead of schedule. “People are really keen to hear from us when we are opening up in a new area,” he says.
Mike is a natural relationship builder and instinctively builds partnerships within his business. He speaks very warmly of the partnership with Amuri.net which morphed from collegial advice and support in the formative phase, to an enduring wholesale arrangement today. Ultimate also partners extensively with other telecommunications operators to source backhaul and share infrastructure. They’re currently working on a deal with a digital trust, and they work closely with local government through their regions’ mayors.
Ultimate’s network operations centre team of Prashant Sharma and Jeremy Jackson looking at some network expansion.
Looking to the future, and like some other WISPs, Ultimate is working on an umbrella management system for digital farms. It will include a wide range of services such as remote opening of gates, stock traceability, fertiliser application, irrigation and farm security – all connected through the burgeoning new “Internet of Things.” “This will be a really good add-on to our farm network offering,” Mike says. “It will benefit the customer by having a single point of call for any servicing, remove the complexity of having multiple service providers’ radio signals creating interference, and make the customer more sticky as far as Ultimate is concerned.
And with 95% OF Ultimate’s customers being farmers, that stickiness is really Important.
Happy Customer – “Hallelujah – I found the ultimate broadband”
With a background in media and tourism, Emma Graham is not your typical Banks Peninsula farmer. She and her husband abandoned city life to become the fifth generation of Grahams to run the century-old, 1400 hectare Ahuriri Farm near Tai Tapu – an estate with a long reputation for producing export quality, lean, tender and succulent Canterbury lamb.
The Grahams are unashamedly city people. Their move to the country was life changing. Emma did a farm management course to prepare. The couple determined to keep their successful city-based businesses running remotely.
Until the realisation dawned that Ahuriri was still on dial up.
“For three years I battled to get fibre here,” Emma recalls. “I knew there was fibre coming up our road. I made several hundred phone calls. But I couldn’t get anyone to listen – costs kept rising, they talked about a six figure capex investment.
“I had a problem with cellphones too. I could just make an outward call by going out on the lawn and waving the phone around. But an inward call – forget it.”
“And then – halleluiah – I found Ultimate Broadband and all the problems were over.”
Ahuriri Station’s Emma Graham chats on the century-old farmhouse veranda with Mike Smith, owner and CEO of Ultimate Broadband.
“The service quality is great. We can now live in this house. My husband can be in touch with his Auckland and Christchurch offices from here. The tenants and farm staff are happy. And Netflix runs better here over Ultimate than it did in town.
“Most important is the way I can now modernise the running of the farm. I can stand in the middle of a paddock and look up its history and status. I’m looking to work with Ultimate on more automated solutions driven by the technology – monitoring water, automated gates, drones, stock traceability, pump operation and a whole lot more. I’ve now got the communication tools to do all that.”
Emma admits to being a true perfectionist – she wants to do it once and do it right. She understands technology and has a true vision of Ahuriri being managed using 21st century technology, at city speeds. That’s a vision she and Mike Smith share, and which an increasing number of WISPs as well as a younger generation of farmers are now working towards.
In the year that Ahuriri has been an Ultimate customer there has been only one issue – on a Saturday afternoon – and Ultimate came out and fixed it within an hour or two.
A new age farming couple with city backgrounds and city businesses, with a tech-savvy, enthusiastic WISP with an eye to a commercial farm management package might well be a winning combination for farm management and social inclusivity in rural New Zealand. Watch this space.
Countrynet owner Russ Watson tells me he’s never had so much fun in his life as building a WISP.
As our chopper climbs 7300 feet into the Remarkables above Queenstown on an idyllic summer day in a heat wave, I can understand that.
Out the window, almost in touching distance, is Double Cone dominated by Countrynet’s highest site. Russ points out the radio gear that takes the signal from Countrynet’s Network Operating Centre in the Watsons’ home and bounces it on to numerous sites further into the region, the array of solar panels that power it, and the batteries and diesel generators for backup. We’re way, way up in the sky and you expect either a deer or Gollum to appear at any moment.
“I’ve climbed up there with a pack of gear a good few times,” he tells me matter-of-factly.
Sooner him than me.
The Remarkables site is one of 30 servicing a couple of hundred happy Countrynet customers. They’re farmers, lifestyle block dwellers and remote businesses. Russ and his wife Shirley look on them as friends. Many are provided with computer services and other technical help that goes well beyond just the fast Internet connection.
With a background including farming, a lifelong interest in amateur radio, and impressive technical expertise in SCADA (the computer systems that run critical infrastructure like drainage, water and electricity,) setting up a WISP came as a natural move late in his career. Around 2002 he started selling Internet connectivity as a by-product of his SCADA work. He, and Countrynet, have never looked back.
The helicopter dives alarmingly towards the famous Walter Peak station.
These days its a major tourist attraction as well as a working sheep station. My hands won’t stop vibrating in time with the rotor blades as I try to make notes, hold the camera steady, and take in the view.
At Walter Peak we land twice – once to inspect another of Countrynet’s radio sites, and the other to drop off a parcel as a favour. Walter Peak is a loyal customer. Without mains power the cellular companies cannot put cell sites nearby so the less power-hungry WISP WiFi sites are perfect for the job. Since Countrynet came along Walter Peak has benefited from the ability to do things like Internet banking and tax work online, but the biggest benefit has been in ability to attract and retain staff without their suffering from real isolation. In the WISP era they watch Netfix and Youtube videos like the rest of us. And remote Otago and Southland have a disproportionate amount of homeschooling so the ability to connect with the school network and the wide world of education is a real plus.
Back at Queenstown Airport we hop into his electric car and head for his Network Operations Centre/home. Russ and wife Shirley are Countrynet’s only employees. They manage the network from laptops and cell phones, from anywhere in the world, with access to usage volumes second by second, the status of each site, and tools to activate backup or bypass a site if something goes wrong. Automation using tailored open source software proliferates, manpower requirements are minimal.
Several contract installers work with them. These people also make the sales calls. There’s no advertising – word of mouth works well in the country so why would you? And the business philosophy is to provide ample bandwidth capacity which in the end is cheaper than trying to manage scarcity as well as delivering a superior customer experience. There are no fixed term contracts – a handshake still means something in the South. “The natural contract of good service and good delivery is deemed sufficient,” Russ says.
VoIP services – Voice over Internet Protocol – are a standard offering. Customers on 2degrees can now use their cellphones for making and receiving calls and texts over Countrynet’s WiFi even if they are way out of range of any cellular network. Other cellphone users can use VoIP by using an internal Countrynet number, referring to this number on the greeting message they leave on their cell phone voicemail. The end result is isolated customers missing far fewer mobile calls.
Countrynet still runs the SCADA network for the local Council. Anyone can go onto countrynet.co.nz/scada and see up-to-the-minute information about water collection and usage through the Lakes District – of limited interest in the cities but crucial intelligence for a water-dependent back country station.
Like any small business there are challenges. Lack of competitive backhaul (connection to the mainstream telecommunications networks), a sense that they are too small to be taken seriously by government and councils, and the “big feet” of the big telcos who trample over the little guys are among them. But Countrynet’s philosophy of “more technology, fewer people” and their close relationship with their customers has made them a highly successful business.
The helicopter dives alarmingly towards the famous Walter Peak station.