Vodafone New Zealand is the largest mobile phone operator in the country with around 2.5 million subscribers. Their competitors are Telecom New Zealand (just over 2 million) and 2degrees (around 0.5 million).

They followed several of the other Vodafone Group companies, introducing commercial femtocell service in January 2011, again using the Sure Signal brand name found elsewhere. Also common with other Vodafone subsiduaries, the end-to-end femtocell system was supplied by Alcatel-Lucent, with the femtocell hardware provided by Sagem.

A local review of the Vodafone NZ Sure Signal service is posted on Geekzone

There are a couple of significant differences from the commerical offer in other Vodafone countries:

1) All femtocells are configured for open access. This means there is no need to register specific phones/users before they can make or receive calls on the device.

2) Vodafone DSL broadband is mandatory. However, because they provide this, the data that the femtocell uses is not counted towards the monthly DSL broadband usage.

These two differences work together because open access won't cost the customer any more, but provides much simpler and easier access for all Vodafone mobile phone users.

It is understood that enterprise and outdoor femtocells are also being used by the operator, also supplied by Alcatel-Lucent.

More information and ordering can be found on the Vodafone NZ website

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