Internet demand lifts new users by 300%
A Timaru-based national company has seen some of its biggest successes through Covid-19 and thinks some longer term gains could come out of it.
With more people working from home, internet provider Farmside saw a 300 per cent rise in new customers, and a data use increase of 74 per cent during lockdown.
‘‘Our customer base grew rapidly, data use increased almost exponentially day-by-day, and we started to see the strain on the network at a wholesale level, so together with parent company Vodafone and Chorus we were all making provision to ensure there was enough capacity,’’ general manager Jason Sharp said.
The company offers internet connections through fibre, ADSL and VDSL, wireless and satellite depending on location, some of which are selfinstallation which was a ‘‘godsend’’ during alert level four , he said.
He said the strain could be felt, particularly in rural areas, which are subject to data caps because of infrastructure limits.
‘‘Once you get to 200mb your connection either stops or you start paying additional overages and that’s a real bugbear of mine – why should rural New Zealand be hamstrung in terms of data usage?’’ he said.
‘‘We are working with the ministry and have proposed a plan to upgrade the infrastructure and by doing that we can provide larger data caps and the ministry has been really receptive.’’
About a week into lockdown the company was able to offer unlimited offpeak data to customers, Sharp said.
There was also an educational element to the company’s interaction with customers and on social media, asking them to install updates or downloads during off-peak times.
‘‘Generally, customers were really supportive, and we positioned it as ‘we’re in this together, we’re here to help you but you need to help us and everyone else’. I was proud of our customer base and how they adopted it.’’
During lockdown the company was delivering RBI connections to about 3000 homes that didn’t have internet so they could access education.
The Government has recognised the need for better infrastructure, highlighted by Covid, and is acting on it, Sharp said.
Farmside has been operating for about 16 years and, with Vodafone now its parent company, is responsible for rural internet connectivity across New Zealand, with two-thirds of its customer base in the North Island.
Despite that, Sharp said it is in Timaru to stay.
‘‘We pride ourselves in being in based in Timaru.
‘‘It is heartland, and we have people that live in the heart of rural New Zealand and are connected with farming, and that comes through to our rural customers,’’ he said.
‘‘A number of our people live on farms, our sales manager, during Covid, was actually helping her parents with milking, coming from the dairy shed and jumping on Zoom meetings.’’
Farmside is committed to ‘‘supporting local’’, sponsoring South Canterbury Rugby and providing free wi-fi to clubs in the region, he said.
Farmside is part of a Net Promoter
Programme, which means customer reviews are fed through to staff in real time.
‘‘We make decisions based on what our customers tell us and that platform is fantastic.’’
At the time of this interview, the rating was sitting at 81.2 for the day and 53 for the past six months. Sharp said the industry average is minus nine.
‘‘We’re responsive, we get their needs and understand their requirements, which is why we’re growing and our staff turnover is extremely low,’’ he said.
‘‘All of that helped us through Covid, we had a really good baseline to start from.’’
He said one of the biggest challenges they faced during lockdown was having to move their 40 staff to working from home.
‘‘We’re fortunate that we’ve made investment in having cloud-based systems and platforms that we could just lift up, but we’d never tested it, so it was a leap of faith and belief in our systems.
‘‘It was hard for our people to make that change, particularly those that have family and kids at home, so we looked at how we could split shifts with people so some could come online in the evening and be free in the day to manage their home environment.’’ Broadband was the absolute enabler for the ‘‘new norm’’, Sharp said.