ABOUT US

WIZwireless Limited:

WIZwireless is a rural telecommunication company providing an Internet Service Provider (ISP) service based in Wairarapa and builds rural radio masts for wireless broadband.

Vision

To be the provider of choice for rural and remote broadband users

Mission Statement

To develop a region wide network providing rural and remote communities with true broadband; this can help Wairarapa residents to improve their own business to be more profitable and to give environmental sustainable options in telecommunication services.

Organisational Profile

" Hello, I’m Bridget Canning, Managing Director of WIZwireless Limited.

WIZwireless Limited is a rural broadband company specialising in providing wireless broadband for rural users. We started our business to solve the rural issues with broadband.

I am married to a sheep and beef farmer and we live in Tinui, an area some call “a remote rural community”, approx 1 hour North East of Masterton towards Castlepoint. We have experienced first hand the impact slow internet has on our business.

I’m sure all of you have a story about someone on poor internet. We kept hearing about the slowness of dialup and expense of satellite services, so we looked to solve this for all our rural residents. We chose to rise to the challenge and do something about it. This proved to be a huge learning curve for us, but one we have grasped with both hands.

We own all the radio mast infrastructures on our network. We also collocate on another six sites by adding our own radio equipment, solar panels and batteries.

I know you will all have several “smart” rural stories. We too have some smart stories – for example we have a thoracic surgeon who reads his patients X-Rays being taken in Hawaii but he lives in Whareama (approx 1 hour, East of Masterton). We also have a scientist from Melbourne, who links directly into the university in Australia, does his research from the back blocks of Tinui and travels all over the world to do his give presentations. He wasn’t going to buy the property unless he could be guaranteed fast internet. He now says it is faster here than it was at “home” in Melbourne! Locally the Golden Shears competition uses our network to stream the live scenes while the competition happens in conjunction with HarvestNZ.

A snapshot history of our organisation
We pride ourselves in being highly relevant and responsive to our customer needs. Canning & Associates Limited was a Masterton-based company which started by providing ICT services to the local business, rural and remote community in 2002.

In February 2005 we started building our WIZwireless network and in April we had our first live connection to Tinui, approx 1 hour NE of Masterton in rural Wairarapa. Originally we purchased our backhaul from SiliconBlue an ISP based in the Departmental Building in Masterton, then in May 2005 they withdrew from Masterton so we purchased their servers and took on their backhaul connection with TelstraClear.

In January 2007 we purchased the Orcon WiseNet wireless network and combined the two networks so now we have coverage locally for rural, residential, school, community organisations and commercial customers.

As the network grew we needed more than the 2MB connection, the frame circuit was able to provide, so we moved to a wireless connection through Araneo and ICONZ which were our main connection until our dark fibre was livened November 2009. We then had our main backhaul through InspireNet based in Palmerston North - we join their network at Eketahuna and have fibre until the outskirts of Masterton where we go back over a licenced wireless link into our NOC in Mastermall - Masterton CBD.

In late December 2013 we changed over to Snap Internet using the UFB fibre premier service and a BGP directly to Wellington Internet Exchange over fibre to give even more speed at an economic rate as our network continues to grow exponentially. Our subscribers keep getting increase speed and data as the network radio units are upgraded and at less cost per GB with each upgrade. WIZwireless can now offer Voice over IP with our partnership with 2Talk.

Industry Awards

We were the winner of two industry peer awards in 2007 namely TUANZ Innovation Broadband Rural Award and Computerworld Excellence Awards in Use of Mobile, Wireless and Telecommunications Category and finalist for Computerworld Excellence Awards in Excellence in the Use of ICT in a Small Business.

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