Spark New Zealand

The Postal Services Act 1987 split the then New Zealand Post Office into New Zealand Post Limited , Telecom Corporation of New Zealand Limited and Post Office Bank Limited and all three industries progressively deregulated. The selling price of Telecom was considered by some to be extremely low, given that Telecom had a monopoly of all phone lines in New Zealand at the time.

1990s

In 1990, Telecom was sold to two United States-based telecommunications companies, Verizon Communications and Ameritech, for NZ$4.25 billion. After Telecom was privatized, the Kiwi Share agreement was drawn up, which included a provision that the company retained free local calling for residential customers.In 1991, Telecom listed on the New Zealand, Australian and New York stock exchanges. The following year Telecom implemented a NZ$200 million fibre-optic cable connection between Australia and New Zealand. Also in 1991, Roderick Deane was appointed CEO of the company. Then in 1993 Ameritech and Bell Atlantic reduced their share in Telecom to a combined 49.6% and BellSouth New Zealand Limited , subsequently acquired by Vodafone, set up the first mobile network to compete with Telecom.

Clear Communications reached an agreement with Telecom in 1995 on local service interconnection. Also in 1995, Telecom created First Media Ltd to develop a cable television network across Auckland and Wellington, called First TV. In 1996 Telecom established a telephone exchange in the United States for international traffic, and launched Xtra, which is New Zealand's largest internet service provider today.1997 saw Telecom buy back NZ$1 billion of its shares. The following year, Ameritech sold down its 24.8% shareholding in an international public offering, and Bell Atlantic issued exchangeable notes that were convertible into the Telecom shares that it owned. Also in 1998, Southern Cross Cables Limited announced plans to build a fibre-optic cable linking New Zealand with Australia and North America, and Vodafone New Zealand bought BellSouth and started a campaign to attract Telecom customers to its network.In December 1997 Patricia Reddy was appointed to the Telecom board. She remained on it until 2008. In September 2016 as Dame Patsy Reddy she became the Governor General of New Zealand.

In 1999, Telecom established a presence in Australia, buying 78% of AAPT, Australia's third-largest telecommunications company. Telecom upgraded its nationwide payphone network to smart card technology. Telecom's broadband Internet service based on ADSL technology, called JetStream, was launched and rolled-out progressively in local exchanges. Also at this time, Telecom began charging customers who connected to the Internet using a local dial up number, forcing all ISPs in New Zealand to change to an 0867 dial up number. This resulted in complaints that this was in breach of Telecom's Kiwishare Agreement where residential customers are allowed free local calling. The decade was rounded off with Theresa Gattung being appointed new CEO of Telecom, with Rod Deane moving to the position of chairman.

2000s

In 2000, Xtra signed up its 300,000th customer. Telecom also raised its shareholding in AAPT to 100%.

Evidence emerged in early 2002 of Telecom having exploited an ill-considered, or fraudulently made to order, accounting standard to inflate its year 2001 reported profit by some $263m. This standard required holding companies to incorporate profits and losses of associate companies into their group accounts by way of "equity accounting" except when the associate is insolvent. Being insolvent has been wrongly taken as substantial evidence that the holding company will no longer share in the associates profits and losses. The associate company Southern Cross Cables paid Telecom $263m in dividends as per Telecom's 2001 annual accounts, $US200m as per Southern Cross's annual accounts. Southern Cross opened for business in November 2000 and its income from operations to 30 June 2001 was only $US13m . Southern Cross were insolvent to the extent of $US24m as at 30 June 2000 and this increased to $US280m as at June 2001 as a result of the dividends and other expenses . The dividends were treated as income in Telecom's accounts there being nothing in FRS 28 to say that they should not be although such inclusion did breach an overall requirement that the accounts present a fair view.

In 2003, a new logo was launched.In 2004, Telecom purchased Gen-i Ltd and Computerland Ltd . The company had 36 retail stores around the country. During the year, the company won the Roger Award for The Worst Transnational Corporation operating in New Zealand.

In 2005, Telecom introduced "Bitstream", a 256 kbit ADSL service sold at wholesale prices to other ISPs. Telecom also posted a profit of NZ$916 million. The company also launched online retail store Ferrit launches with about 150 retailers.

20069 May: An audio clip recorded on 2 March was released involving Telecom CEO Theresa Gattung admitting the use of confusion as a chief marketing tool in the industry. The March recording also dismissed the New Zealand Government as "too smart to do anything dumb" with regards to regulation.

Late May: Roderick Deane resigns as chairman, and is replaced by Wayne Boyd the following month.

July: Matt Crockett is appointed CEO of Telecom's newly formed Wholesale division.

All Computerland branches around New Zealand are rebranded as Gen-i.200716 January: The Librarians Association of New Zealand put in a complaint about a Telecom advertisement where 3 young school children state that, "Only dumb kids read books, brainy kids have broadband." Originally Telecom stated that is the views of the young children and not Telecom and the advertisement was unscripted, later that week Telecom choose to edit the advertisement to remove the comments made by the children.

19 January: It is reported that Paritai Drive, ?r?kei, one of the richest streets in Auckland, is still not capable of receiving a broadband SL service and there are many other well populated areas around New Zealand still not capable of receiving broadband. Opposition Woosh Wireless immediately tested their service in the area and gave residents the opportunity to join their wireless broadband service.

5 February: Telecom announces that from March 2007 they will begin rolling out ADSL2+, more than a year after originally stated for roll out.

31 March: Telecom shuts down its old 025 D-AMPS/TDMA network with all 025 phones changed to 027 .

May 2007: British Telecom have been in discussion with the New Zealand government regarding Telecom's monopoly control of the NZ broadband network. Three to four years previously, British Telecom were in a similar position to that which NZ Telecom are now in; the British broadband network has since been broken up and the NZ government are keen to learn and possibly copy the development/regulatory/investment model used by the British firm.

The Auckland Chamber of Commerce publicly stated that if Telecom did not invest in a next-generation high-speed network, comparable with that of other Western nations, they would fund a private fibre-optic based service in the 100 megabit speed range. The proposed coverage of this would be within 200m of a path running south from Auckland CBD . Any company or private individual within this range would be offered a connection.

28 June: Telecom announced that Paul Reynolds, CEO of BT Wholesale, has been selected as the new CEO, to start on 27 September. Simon Moutter was appointed as acting CEO in the interim.

30 June: Theresa Gattung steps down as CEO, with a reported leaving payment of $5.125 million.

27 September: Dr Paul Reynolds starts as CEO of Telecom.

In November 2007, the Boost Mobile brand was discontinued in New Zealand by Telecom..

21 November: Mark Ratcliffe, Chief Operating Officer for Technology, is appointed CEO of Telecom's soon-to-be spun off network division.2008

16 January: Telecom announces the formation of Chorus, its new network infrastructure division.

31 March: Telecom officially separates into three divisions

1 April: Russ Houlden, a colleague of Reynolds at BT, is appointed Chief Financial Officer. He replaces Marko Bogoievski, who joined Infratil.200912 January: Telecom announces the closure of its online retail store Ferrit.

August: An industrial dispute emerged between Chorus and the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union after servicing contracts in the Auckland and Northland regions are awarded to Australian company Visionstream, which planned to change technicians' employment contracts to a dependent contractor model.In October a new logo was announced.

2010s

2010November: Telecom moves into its newly built world HQ on Victoria St in the Auckland CBD. Costing the developer $280 million, it will consist of 2700 staff and be the largest corporate move in New Zealand history.201124 May: Crown Fibre Holdings announced that Telecom had been successful in partnering with the Government to build a fibre network.

9 June: The National Business Review reveals that in OIA documents that the Department of Internal Affairs considered at least one text message sent by Telecom to be in breach of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007.

1 December: Telecom divests itself of Chorus, the Network Infrastructure division, in a one for five share deal, with Chorus becoming a separately listed company.20139 December: Telecom announces sale of AAPT for A$450 million201421 February: Telecom announces a name change to 'Spark', which took effect on 8 August 2014 to better reflect the company's new direction and aspirations.

25 June 2014: Spark announce Lightbox, an online movie and TV show streaming service, in competition with Netflix and SkyTV. Lightbox went live on 27 August 2014.

8 August: Telecom rebrands as Spark. Individual subsidiaries of the company are rebranded to reflect the name change such as Telecom Mobile becomes Spark Mobile, Telecom Foundation becomes Spark Foundation, Gen-i is rebranded as Spark Digital. The company kept the existing Star shaped logo with each division using a different colour for the logo such as silver for Spark New Zealand, orange or pink for Spark Home & Mobile stores, green for Spark Business and purple for Spark Digital.

5–7 September: Spark experiences nationwide outages due to a denial of service attack, which was believed to have largely originated from malware that installed itself onto customers' computers when they clicked on malicious links to celebrity photos leaked in August.201512 August: Spark released a new cloud based consumer service called Morepork, which offers smart home based security services. This enabled consumers to purchase security hardware and services through a monthly subscription for home monitoring linked to their mobile phone.

7 December: Spark purchased a South Island based IT services firm, Computer Concepts Ltd, for $50million NZD.201914 March: Spark launched its subscription based sports streaming service Spark Sport. The service would compete against Sky Sport which at the time had a near monopoly on pay TV sports rights in New Zealand.

19 December: It was announced that Spark would be selling its Lightbox streaming service to the satellite television company Sky Television, which intends to merge Lightbox into its own online streaming service Neon in 2020. Following the merger, Spark will partner with Sky to make the service available to Spark customers through the telecommunication company's entertainment offers.

Mobile network

Telecom started the first cellular network services using AMPS in 1987. This transitioned to D-AMPS TDMA digital services in the early 1990s. The service in the 800 MHz band gave great geographic coverage and set the bar for service performance for many years.

In 1996 Telecom introduced an innovative and first-to-market wireless data cellular network known as CDPD that provided IP connections with mobility. Introduced to the market by the product manager, David Beale, they succeeded in the very first iOT-device connections in the region connecting, amongst other things, Coke's vending machines, NZ Post's couriers and parcel tracking, and telemetry data from the Americas Cup yacht races in Auckland to feed a realtime TV graphics service.

Telecom Mobile, the mobile division of Telecom, reached 500,000 mobile customers connected to its network in 1998, which doubled to one million customers by 2000. In 2005, a phreaker named ^god exposed a vulnerability with the mobile network, allowing public access to almost anyone's voicemail; in response to concerns over privacy and security, this network issue was resolved.

On 31 March 2007, the 025 D-AMPS cellular network was closed down. Then on 8 June of that year, Telecom Mobile announced plans to build a hybrid W-CDMA/UMTS-CDMA 850 MHz network, based on the WCDMA HSPA technology, to eventually replace its current CDMA EV-DO network. On 29 May 2009, Telecom launched its new network, branded as "XT", to the public.In December 2009 and February 2010, Telecom's new XT Mobile Network experienced high-profile failures for many customers in locations from Taupo south, due to a radio network controller failure in Christchurch. As a result of the loss of service Telecom offered a $5 million compensation package for its customers.In April 2010, Telecom released its first Android handset on the XT Mobile Network, the LG GW620.

On 31 July 2012, the Telecom CDMA mobile network was closed down.In September 2013, Telecom officially launched new Ultra Mobile branding and plans. These plans include a free 4G upgrade with a 1GB of data per day from Telecom WiFi hotspots. In October 2013, Telecom sought clearance to acquire management rights for parts of the 700 MHz spectrum with the intention of aiding in the development of its 4G mobile network.

Industry regulation and company restructuring

In 2000, the New Zealand Government conducted a comprehensive review of the regulatory regime in the telecommunications industry. Subsequently, in 2001 the Telecommunications Act was passed, which among other things established the role of a Telecommunications Commissioner.

In a decision by the Government on 3 May 2006, Telecom was forced to unbundle the local loop, to provide "access to fast, competitively priced broadband internet". The decision significantly affected the company's market share, and allowed competitors to offer broadband and other communications services throughout New Zealand by installing their own equipment in exchanges. The announcement of this decision was rushed ahead of schedule, as the documents were leaked to Telecom who advised the government of the leak. It was widely reported that the government had intended to make the announcement during the 2006 Budget. Most of Telecom's competitors and many independent commentators such as InternetNZ and Paul Budde applauded the decision, with opposition to unbundling coming from the Business Roundtable, Federated Farmers, and Bruce Sheppard . Legislation was introduced to enable the regulatory changes. Three other political parties supported the decision, which would give the government at least 66 votes if there were no votes against the party line. The main opposition National Party initially opposed the unbundling decision, but later voted in favour of it after a select committee hearing. This left the ACT Party alone in opposing the decision.

The company was then affected by a series of other government decisions. Firstly, in early-June 2006 the Commerce Commission ruled on the contentious issue of mobile telephone termination charges, announcing that calls between a landline and a mobile phone within a geographically defined boundary could be connected free of termination charges. This ruling allowed Vodafone New Zealand to establish a mobile phone product which could also provide free local calling. Then, the Commerce Commission granted two of Telecom's competitors, CallPlus and ihug, access to an unrestricted, Unbundled Bitstream Service, which would allow them to provide competitive broadband services.On 27 June 2006, the company announced that it would voluntarily separate its business into two separate operating business units – Wholesale and Retail. The Government introduced the Telecommunications Amendment Bill in November 2006 to force Telecom to open its network to competitors. The bill officially split Telecom into three business units from 31 March 2008, with network access separated from the wholesale and retail units.In January 2012 Telecom launched a new Mobile Network aimed at the youth market named Skinny MobileOn 28 March 2013, Telecom announced that it would reduce staff levels by constraint on recruitment activity and redundancies. This followed from speculation by MP Clare Curran that up to 1500 jobs would be cut from the company.