One in seven Kiwis failed to complete New Zealand’s first online census – a record low for census completion – as New Zealand follows Australia in stumbling in attempts at a ‘digital first’ national survey.

The New Zealand figures were revealed by the government’s chief statistician, Liz MacPherson, after she was threatened with being held in contempt of Parliament.

Statistics NZ opted for the online survey in 2018. As well as a record low in Kiwi’s filling in the form, there was a doubling in the partial response rate according to National’s State Services spokesperson Nick Smith.

“It is critical that trust and confidence in future censuses are maintained and enhanced.”

According to economic consultants, Berl “…around 480,000 people did not participate in Census 2018. Given the estimated population at the time was 4.88 million, this equates to 10 per cent of the population. To provide some further context, the 480,000 people is around the same size as the entire Waikato Region.”

The scale of the abnormally low 2018 census turnout led much hair pulling and shouting in parliament. The government agreed to appoint a team to conduct an independent review of what went wrong. According to Stats NZ, the review will be undertaken by management consultant, Murray Jack, and a Canadian census expert, Connie Graziadei. Findings from the review are expected to be released in July.

According to the terms and references of the review “the Government statistician is seeking robust independent advice on the 2018 Census, with a focus on understanding what factors contributed to the lower than expected participation rate, so that future censuses and other household surveys can be as effective as possible. Stats NZ is a learning organisation. It holds itself and the way it delivers official statistics to a high standard. Given the importance of the census and the role it plays in informing decisions that affect the lives of New Zealanders, it is critical that trust and confidence in future censuses are maintained and enhanced.”

New Zealand’s census predicament is not unique. In Australia, the 2016 Online Census was marred by the Australian Bureau of Statistics taking the Census website down after what it said was a series of denial of service attacks followed by a hardware failure that led to a misidentification of a larger denial of service attempt.

The political fallout was predictably swift. The then Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, lashed out at IBM (who had won the contract to host the census in 2014) and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, saying “There has clearly been a failure in the work that was done” and that “My prediction is that there will be some very serious consequences to this”. Shortly afterwards, the Australian government appointed Alastair MacGibbon, the Australian Prime Minister’s Special Advisor on Cyber Security, to conduct a review of the failed census.

The MacGibbon team included senior members from what read like an A-Z of Australian Government Departments. These included the Prime Minister’s office, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), the Australian Information Commissioner, the Australian Department of Finance, the Treasury, the Australian Digital Transformation Office and the Attorney-General’s Department plus a liaison officer from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The Australian Signals Directorate later confirmed that no data was compromised.

According to the findings of the review “the ABS severely underutilised social media as a communications tool to keep the public up to date and informed of the incident. The ABS’s lack of timely and transparent communications lost it trust because it opened the door to speculation. The continued slow updates and virtual absence from the media meant that ABS struggled to win back the trust of the public in the following days. Ministers must also be supported with clear and accurate advice, and senior executives must be equipped to understand and talk about cyber security as a matter of business risk.”

The rationale for a government to switch to a digital census appears compelling. Not only is it a considerably less costly to undertake than printing and mailing census forms to New Zealand households, but online digital forms can also be simpler to complete in that they can warn of missed or incorrectly answered questions and provide more predefined answers than a printed form. An all-digital census should, in theory, also be a significantly faster operation for statisticians.

As is so often the case, reality proves far more complicated than theory. In a blog commenting on lower than expected turnouts for the 2018 census, New Zealand’s 20/20 Trust, which promotes digital inclusivity, identified several issues that hindered response rates. These included the census not being properly accessible (with difficulties in obtaining a paper census form for those unable to get online) and a lack of briefing to helpdesk staff, who 20/20 also says were inexperienced, compounded issues. The 20/20 Trust also note that the online census FAQ was “fairly superficial”.

Perhaps most critically of all, there was too much emphasis on ‘Digital First’ – it was difficult to get paper forms, and the different user experience of paper forms versus their online counterparts was also not fully appreciated.

The pre-set answers alienated some groups, and many had concerns about privacy. Last but by no means least, testing was fragmented, not ‘whole process’ and didn’t include all the right groups.

The biggest test of an online census is about to happen. In 2020, the US census gets underway and goes digital. Armies of volunteers armed with iPhones will descend on US households to gather census data. There are good reasons for the move to a digital census. Costing US$12 billion, the 2010 census was the most expensive in US history.

Given the mixed track record of online census taking to date, experts are understandably worried that the US Bureau of Statistics could leave itself exposed to numerous new risks, including technology failures and cybersecurity issues.

Meanwhile, New Zealand awaits the findings from the census review team. Watch this space.

Investors are getting their first real peek under the hood of global ride-sharing giant Uber as its IPO filing, consisting of hundreds of pages of detailed information, gets submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Assuming the IPO goes smoothly, it will be the biggest listing of 2019 as Uber is understood to be seeking to raise US$10 billion and could begin trading publicly as early as May.

Uber’s line up of investors consists of Toyota Motor Company, Jeff Bezos, Fidelity Investments, SoftBank and Tencent Music. As of October 2018, Uber was funded by more than 96 corporate and private investors, raising over US$22 billion from its capital ventures and investors. Based on this, Uber can claim to be the number-one rated unicorn (a private company valued at over $1 billion) globally.

While Uber has long released partial financial results, the IPO filing provides the first comprehensive look at their numbers and operations. Investors want detail, especially as many already have rival, Lyft’s, March IPO filing as a reference to benchmark Uber’s value. Comparisons between both companies are inevitable, and prospective investors will be keen to break out Uber’s US ride-hailing numbers from global figures as Lyft only operates in North America.

Once floated, Uber will be under considerable pressure to achieve profitability.

Uber disclosed $50 billion in gross bookings last year, up an estimated 45 percent from similar figures in 2017. Ubers data also showed slowing revenues. Of the $11.4 billion revenue reported for 2018, $3 billion were generated in the last three months of the year, up 2 percent from the previous quarter. While that number translates into year-on-year quarterly growth of 25 percent —it fell short of the 38 percent rate recorded in last years third quarter.

In 2017, Uber ran at a loss. It recorded a US$0.8 billion loss in Q1, a US$1.1 billion loss in Q2, a US$1.5 billion loss in Q3 and a $1.1 billion loss for Q4. During the first quarter of 2018, Uber turned a profit of US$2.5 billion which was mainly due to deals made throughout southeast Asia and Russia. The second quarter again revealed a loss of $0.9 billion. Uber CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, said that Uber would take short-term losses to achieve their long-term growth goals.

Understandably curious Investors are seeking explanations for Uber’s slowing trajectory, and some speculate that these numbers as a sign that Uber’s core ride-sharing business may be stalling. Investors are also likely to want to know what line of business the money is coming from as Uber expands into other sectors including food and package delivery plus e-scooters and e-bicycles, plus Uber has also said that they are looking into driverless vehicles and flying taxis. Uber’s last public valuation was US$76 billion and happened when Toyota invested in Uber in 2018. Further details on the number of shares to be offered and their price are not likely to be known until a later filing.

The multi-billion dollar question now is how attractive Uber will be to investors?

The company is not without its challenges. While Uber’s 2018 revenues were a 42 percent jump over the previous year, their operating losses are significant. The filing shows loses of US$1.8 billion for 2018. While this represents a considerable improvement over the US$4.1 billion losses recorded in 2017, Uber is still prioritising growth over profit.

Much of the speculation around these numbers attribute the losses to competition from Lyft which saw a price war in the US/Canadian ride sharing space, while increasing competition slowed growth in the food delivery space. This is particularly evident with current user numbers. Uber recorded 91 million active users as of the end of 2018, up 23 million on the previous year. Revenue, however, almost halved in 2018.

Further adding to Uber’s US woes was the loss of ‘hundreds of thousands’ of customers in January 2017, following the #DeleteUber backlash against the company after it lifted surge pricing around JFK International during a New York Taxi Workers strike. The strike was in support of protests at US airports over Trump’s immigration policies and the condemnation against Uber was swift.

Uber’s problems extend beyond the US. The company suspended activities in Bulgaria in 2015 after protests and a threatened strike by Bulgarian taxi operators who said Uber practised ‘unfair trade practices’ as Uber drivers operated without taxi licences or any defined legal status. Following an investigation by authorities, Bulgaria’s competition commission fined Uber €50,000 for unfair competition and the Bulgarian supreme court banned the company. Recently passed legislation in Bulgaria requires taxi services to be provided by licensed carriers with qualified drivers on formal contracts.

Uber also exited the Danish market, where it had more than 300,000 customers, in 2017 when fare meters and seat occupancy sensors were mandated for all vehicles operating as a taxi. In Italy, complaints and a six-day strike by the Italian taxi associations saw the Italian courts blocking the Uber app in 2017. A subsequent appeal lifted the ban but only for the company’s Uber Black service, which uses licensed taxi drivers.

The numerous challenges facing Uber will not end there either.

Once floated, Uber will be under considerable pressure to achieve profitability. Industry speculators say that this could force a sea-change within Uber. That said, over the short-term, Uber is likely to see investing in growing user numbers as a priority.

Based on their previous behaviour they are likely to seek to use promotions, incentives, and aggressive discounts. In 2018 over US$3 billion – a third of their total operating costs – was spent on sales and marketing. A continued focus on growth could also see Uber investing in new markets and operations while they continue to underwrite ‘flying taxi’ as well as autonomous vehicle research. All of which raises the question of whether price hikes will be part of a post-IPO Uber?

Uber also faces regulatory challenges. Their business model is reliant on low-cost driver contractors. If regulators rule that Uber drivers are not contractors, but in fact employees (who would then be entitled to benefits and protection via minimum wage laws) losses could grow. In the Uber filing, Uber notes that over 60,000 drivers expressed interest in arbitration over employee misclassification. It says the outcome of this “could result in significant costs”.

Given the hype surrounding Uber’s IPO and investor behaviour around Lyft’s recent float, it is probable that potential investors will be unfazed by Uber’s losses. Lyft lost $911 million in 2018, yet investors valued the company well above its last private valuation. Morgan Stanley Goldman Sachs says Uber could be valued up to $120 billion when it lists, over US$50 billion more than initially anticipated. Uber could surpass Facebook (US$104 billion in 2012) and Google (US$23 billion in 2004). But the company still has a long way to go to reach Amazon and Apple, both of whom achieved trillion-dollar valuations.

They say if you want to be a millionaire, become a telco – just make sure you’re already a billionaire. How applicable this is to New Zealand’s largest telco, Spark, remains to be seen but targeting a rugby mad and sports crazy nation with a streamed sport offering just as streamed content begins to gain traction faces both risk and reward.

Get it right and it could see the company lowering churn and attracting new customers to their mobile, broadband and landline offerings.

It could also see the Spark brand lambasted and derided for selling the NZ public a bad experience after muscling out Sky TV’s proven and reliable, if costly, alternative.

Regardless, the Spark Sport offering will be a vital component in Kiwi’s enjoyment of the 2019 Rugby World Cup, with Spark securing online rights to the cup, in association with state broadcaster TVNZ.

It’s launch last month received mixed reviews and was followed this week by the shock resignation of Spark CEO Simon Moutter, who has been a key driver in the sports content strategy.

Moutter’s resignation was announced on Wednesday, with current customer director Jolie Hodson taking on the top role from July. Hodson has told the media that she is comfortable with and remains committed to Spark Sport.

So what’s the Spark Sport service, which can be used by anyone, whether a Spark customer or not, like? Spark Sports kicked off with a free 30-day trial. After that, it will set you back $19.99/month.

Platform support is a short-term Achilles heel. While Spark Sport is available as a browser-only option for PCs and Macs, it also supports iOS and Android meaning it will play nice with most smartphones and tablets, and will cast via Apple TV and Chromecast to allow watching on big-screen TV a’la Netflix and Lightbox.

There is considerable debate around Spark’s ability to accommodate a large-scale viewership.

The missing link, however, is a lack of embedded smart TV support, with no Spark Sport app yet available for Android TV (Sony, Philips), Web OS (LG) or Samsung. Jeff Latch, head of Spark Sport has said that support for Samsung, LG, Sony and Panasonic TVs will be added soon.

TVNZ also chips in with 7 games broadcast live on free-to-air TV, including the opening game and the final, as delayed via TVNZ On Demand. While games are still to be announced the presumption is that TVNZ will not follow the All Blacks through the tournament, although some are expecting that will be Spark’s contingency plan in the event of widespread complaints.

Content is streamed in HD (although this does depend on the broadcaster Spark has partnered with). My personal experience was that Spark Sports streaming quality to be reasonable in comparison to other SVOD services.

To date, Spark has signed an attractive line-up of football, motorsport, basketball and hockey. The big drawcard, and the one with the nation’s expectations riding upon it, is rugby: In addition to streaming Women’s Rugby World Cup 2021, the World Rugby U20 Championships and the Heineken Champions Cup, Spark also has streaming rights for the 2019 Rugby World Cup.

Spark is not the only telco to secure online rights for the 2019 Rugby world cup. In Australia, Telstra-backed Foxtel will stream the Rugby world cup via Foxtel Now, the streaming-only version of their Pay TV service. Channel 10 will also stream some coverage, but this will be limited to Wallabies group stage matches and most of the finals.

The Rugby World Cup 2011 semi-finals and grand-final recorded a New Zealand viewing audience of more than two million New Zealand households. Given the growth in smartphone, tablet and PC ownership since then, anticipated viewer numbers for the 2019 event is expected to be somewhat more substantial.

Unsurprisingly there is considerable debate around Spark’s ability to accommodate large-scale viewership. That debate was further inflamed last week when motorsports fans watching the Bahrain F1 qualifying round on Spark Sport found their streaming video disrupted by an unspecified error, and many frustrated with some of the issues that are inherent to streamed “live” content versus Sky TV’s more robust offering.

A Spark spokesperson apologised for the issue, saying they were investigating the issues with their platform provider.

It’s a somewhat familiar issue for streaming sport. In Australia Optus left 2018 World Cup Soccer viewers irate when its service had issues. Optus CEO Allen Lew attributed the streaming woes to unprecedented viewer demand, before announcing the remainder of the tournament would be broadcast on traditional channels.

The F1 debacle heralded a rough few days for Spark, with the company’s stock sliding this week. By Monday afternoon shares were down 3.31 percent. On Wednesday the shock announcement of Moutter’s departure further exacerbated the price drop.

Issues with newly minted streaming services are not unexpected, and the market will move on from Moutter’s surprise announcement, but outages and irate sports fans could quickly turn what should be a golden opportunity into a highly public and brand damaging nightmare as it was for Optus.

Rugby fans will be hoping that Spark have tapped the technical learnings out of the Optus situation, as they have until September 2019 to put any insights gained into play, to ensure a similar debacle doesn’t happen in New Zealand.

Last year Spark switched their Lightbox platform to Brightcove but has yet to announce which platform they are using for Rugby World Cup streaming.

Adding to an already difficult situation, the mix of broadband in New Zealand is comprised of numerous different network technologies, adding complexity for Spark Sport to navigate.

The Government is to spend $49 million over the next seven years across four data science research programmes in an attempt to boost New Zealand’s data science capabilities and increase the role of data science in tackling environmental, social and economic issues.

Funding is assigned via the Strategic Science Investment Fund and each successful data science programme applicant will receive funding to the tune of NZ$1 – NZ$3 million a year for up to seven years.

MBIE says more importance needs to be placed on data science.

“Data science is changing how things are done at an extraordinary rate, providing new ways to improve prosperity and wellbeing. To harness the benefits, New Zealand needs to be at the forefront of the emerging technologies,” MBIE says. “While New Zealand has pockets of world class expertise in data science, current capability is dispersed and small scale.”

Up to $7 million per year for up to seven years was allocated in the 2018 Budget  for investment in the development of stronger data science research capabilities.

Funding is based on responses to real-world use cases, and successful teams will be made up of ‘a team of deeply aligned multi-disciplined partners inspired by a real-world domain/use case’.

“While New Zealand has pockets of world class expertise in data science, current capability is dispersed and small scale.”

MBIE has set investment goals for the programme and has listed the areas of data science that are of interest. These include machine learning, statistical learning, data mining, image processing, language processing, visualisation, transparency and metrics, and Te Ao Māori and data science.

MBIE says it has narrowed down the number of potential data science application areas likely to be of interest to the government. These include ag-tech, the environment, urban planning/environment, the space industry, the health sector (in particular precision health), and energy. Other areas that ‘inspire advanced and data science’ will also be considered for funding on a case by case basis.

The agency will call for proposals in April.

A similar programme last year was abandoned. “We wish to invest in a portfolio of up to four strategic research programmes rather than investing in a single data science research platform,” MBIE now says, adding that it remains committed to an investment in data science. It says the intention of last year’s programme – ‘to lift capability in data science while addressing big challenges for the environment, society or the economy’ – remains unchanged.

MBIE says it is interested in data science because it “is changing how things are done at an extraordinary rate, providing new ways to improve prosperity and wellbeing. To harness the benefits, New Zealand needs to be at the forefront of the emerging technologies.”

The ministry says that the desired outcomes of the investment in data science are to span the following five objectives:

1. Deliver excellence: Produce excellent, cutting edge, dynamic and paradigm-shifting data science research.
2. Grow capability: Grow the scale, depth, excellence and impact of New Zealand’s data science research. The programmes will have strong leadership and multidisciplinary teams. They will attract top international researchers and support emerging researchers.
3. Deliver additionality: Provide fresh and ambitious thinking, new people, new collaborations, new and expanded research, and new impacts that would not have happened without this investment.
4. Leverage strategic collaborations: Foster and grow international and national partnerships amongst data science researchers, and between data science researchers and end users. Partnerships should support research excellence and grow capability.
5. Give effect to the Vision Mātauranga policy practically and meaningfully for Māori.”

When technology is good, it can be life changing, but when it’s bad, it can be terrible. Often it isn’t so much a case of the actual technology being good or bad but of tech giants pushing agendas and not thinking through the impacts on communities.

A case in point is Google subsidiary, Wing. They’re trialling a drone delivery service, much to the dismay of residents Bonython, a suburb of Canberra.

While the drones can deliver a hot cup of coffee mere minutes after it gets ordered, locals living under the drone’s flight path say Wing is making their lives miserable as the noise produced by drones flying over makes relaxing in their own homes impossible.

Operators such as Wing are going to struggle to gain public acceptance if they get seen as an annoyance or intrusion by every household they fly over.

So how noisy are these drones? As almost anyone who has spent time near a drone can attest, they are not quiet. Most sound a like an electric weed eater colliding with a hive filled with angry killer bees. Most of the promotional videos of drone delivery services make liberal use of musical backing tracks to drown out the high-pitched scream of drones in action.

To better understand the true problem, watch the video below (with the sound up):

Privacy concerns and stories of drones used as online peeping toms also means many are wary of uninvited drones flying over properties.

Wing’s parent, Alphabet, has said they will tweak the Wing delivery drone sound levels by reducing flight speeds and changing routes. Alphabet says that means their drones will not only run quieter but they will also not pass over the same addresses regularly, ensuring there is less likelihood of them being an ongoing annoyance.

Complaints out of Canberra are not the first, nor are they likely to be the last examples of communities taking issue with Silicon Valley corporates.

When discussing bumpy community relationships and Silicon Valley companies, Amazon is a name that repeatedly crops up. In the US, Amazon has sought out cities and counties to house their fulfilment centres where goods are packed and shipped to customers. Amazon says they created 40,000 full-time jobs, yet the Economic Policy Institute contradicts this in a report that says that counties with Amazon fulfilment centres are not seeing a sizeable boost to their local economies.

The Economic Policy Institute argues that local governments in communities are giving away large sums of money as tax credits, exemptions and infrastructure assistance to Amazon but are not seeing significant benefits as jobs created are offset by jobs lost in areas such as retailing which is contracting due to the growth in online shopping.

Adding insult to injury, working conditions also appear to nosedive in areas where Amazon sets up shop. A UK undercover investigation found that Amazon warehouse employees took to urinating in bottles so that they did not miss strict time targets. When the investigation went public, other Amazon employees came forward to tell similar stories, saying there was no time for bathroom breaks, or even speaking to co-workers. Reports in the New York Post surfaced of Amazon Drivers using vans as improvised toilets, in order to meet delivery targets. In many states were Amazon operate, wealth is not flowing back into communities. In some US states, up to one in three Amazon workers need food stamps as wages are not enough to keep them above the poverty line.

While the impact of Wing’s drone trials is nowhere near as dire or far-reaching as Amazon’s operations, complaints are still flying thick and fast out of Canberra.

Drone delivery services are a perennial tech media topic, and most have yet to eventuate. While big players like Uber Eats have said they are keen to launch a drone delivery service by 2021, many vendors are still grappling with a multitude of issues surrounding drone deliveries.

Perhaps the most significant issues centre around safety and security. Many drones are easy to hack and this, says cyber-security experts, could see drones taken over by malicious actors. Wings delivery drones are able to fly at 120kph at altitude, so the potential for injury (or spilt coffee) is real. Rather than hacking a drone to crash, experts also speculate that hackers would most likely seek to hack a drone and steal the payload the drone was delivering (the lengths people will go to for a good cup of coffee is amazing!).

In countries like Australia or New Zealand with unpredictable weather, strong winds or torrential rain is another risk that could see delivery failures being an issue as drones getting blown off course or crashing. Privacy is also a big issue. Few members of the public are crazy about camera-equipped drones flying over their properties. How companies such as Wing manage this remains to be seen, but a lack of regulatory oversight in different countries could see this issue being a contentious issue for some time.

If the demo videos are any indication, noise is the big challenge. One thing is abundantly clear, drone delivery operators such as Wing are going to struggle to gain public acceptance if they get seen as an annoyance or intrusion by every household they fly over.

Instead of partying like it was 1999, many spent the last days of the previous millennium worrying about the Y2K bug. The panic, best summed up by The Simpsons, was averted by a massive effort by the IT community leading up to the fateful date.

Now, it turns out that a similar bug is about to strike GPS systems, in just 20 or so days.

On April 6, equipment using older GPS technology (and the emphasis here is on ‘older’ – if devices have been getting regular updates, they should be OK) could get hit with what experts are calling a “Week Number Rollover” issue. They say that this could reset GPS receivers, possibly corrupting location data. Given how reliant humanity has become on the global positioning system, the potential for trouble, for those using the old devices, looks significant.

As outages become a part of our daily lives, it is becoming abundantly clear that more and more of our lives are becoming dependent on vast and unknowable server networks.

Older GPS receivers count weeks using a 10-bit field that maxes out at 1024 weeks, or 19.7 years. These 19.7-year periods are called epochs. The first epoch kicked off when GPS launched in early 1980. On August 21, 1999 GPS receivers reset back to zero. While there was no noticeable disruption, experts say that this was because GPS was not widely used. Next date? April 6, 2019.

Now cybersecurity experts are saying that sheer penetration of GPS in our society could result in the April 6 epoch reset leading to disruptions. In an interview last week, vice president of cybersecurity firm Trend Micro, Bill Malik, went as far as to say he wouldn’t risk flying on April 6, when the week count resets.

For many, a more imminent fear of flying stems from Boeing’s recent failures on its now grounded 737 MAX where it appears faulty sensors have contributed to two of the planes falling from the sky.

The question is have we reached a point where we are putting too much trust in technology?

Another potent illustration of this happened in mid-2017 when a particularly ugly tech wreck reared its head. After a power surge at its Heathrow data centre, British Airways’ IT system fell over, leaving tens of thousands of passengers and their baggage stranded. Part of the problem with this outage was the sheer level of inter-dependency. The power spike caused a chain reaction which took out BA’s entire computer systems. It took 48 hours to restore systems so the airline could recommence flights.

Critics argued that BA should have had (and tested) a backup system and a disaster recovery plan. IT staff and their unions blamed cost-cutting at the airline and outsourcing to India.

Perhaps a less severe but still frustrating example was the recent outage that rendered Gmail, Google Drive and other Google services inoperable around the world, which rippled to (clearly mission critical) Instagram, and coincided with an outage at similarly mission critical Facebook.

Thousands of irate users globally lodged outage reports and complaints ranging from not being able to use Google Docs through to email outages that affected business operations.

Our lives are becoming dependent on vast and unknowable server networks, much of which is often hosted in data centres outside of New Zealand, owned and operated by mega corporations such as Amazon and Microsoft.

The creep of computerisation has seen tech becoming an essential part of virtually all industries as digital technologies such as data analytics, automated logistics and databases help transform industry to become significantly more efficient. Tech has made much of our lives better in many ways. Tedious, complicated and time-consuming chores such as booking flights or banking have become ever more easier, to the greater good of society.

However, with this ease comes a dark side. Humanity is beginning to realise how helpless it is when technology fails.

In the UK, doctors found their computers frozen thanks to a ransomware attack that saw them turning patients away. In the recent Christchurch mosque attacks, ISPs and social media networks watched helplessly as horrific live video footage proliferated faster than networks could detect and remove it.

According to the recent Global Navigation Space Systems: Reliance and Vulnerabilities report from the royal academy of engineering, our over-reliance on GPS technologies could see us particularly exposed to GPS outages.

“Society may already be dangerously over-reliant on satellite radio navigation systems like GPS range of applications using the technology is now so broad that, without adequate independent backup, signal failure or interference could potentially affect safety systems and other critical parts of the economy,” the report warns.

Nowadays GPS is a technology that is part and parcel of many industries ranging from air travel through to emergency services, utilities, financial systems and supply chains.

“The effects would be more widespread (this time) because so many more systems have integrated GPS into their operations…Ports load and unload containers automatically, using GPS to guide the cranes … Public-safety systems incorporate GPS systems, as do traffic-monitoring systems for bridges. Twenty years ago, these links were primitive. Now they are embedded. So, any impact now will be substantially greater,” says Malik.

So, just how seriously are governments taking the week rollover issue? The US Department of Homeland Security issued a memo which says GPS receivers running the latest IS-GPS-200 standard and connected to UTC shouldn’t be adversely affected. They were followed by the New Zealand Measurement Standards Laboratory and the Australian Signals Directorate who both released explainers, recommending that businesses contact GPS equipment manufacturers.

Consumer GPS navigation hardware maker, TomTom says they have already deployed a firmware fix, saying that “if you frequently update your device there’s no need to worry”.

Unless installed systems are connected to a network, as is the case for many automobile and marine systems, those updates will not have happened.

Instead of partying like it was 1999, many spent the last days of the previous millennium worrying about the Y2K bug. The panic, best summed up by The Simpsons, was averted by a massive effort by the IT community leading up to the fateful date.

Now, it turns out that a similar bug is about to strike GPS systems, in just 20 or so days.

On April 6, equipment using older GPS technology (and the emphasis here is on ‘older’ – if devices have been getting regular updates, they should be OK) could get hit with what experts are calling a “Week Number Rollover” issue. They say that this could reset GPS receivers, possibly corrupting location data. Given how reliant humanity has become on the global positioning system, the potential for trouble, for those using the old devices, looks significant.

As outages become a part of our daily lives, it is becoming abundantly clear that more and more of our lives are becoming dependent on vast and unknowable server networks.

Older GPS receivers count weeks using a 10-bit field that maxes out at 1024 weeks, or 19.7 years. These 19.7-year periods are called epochs. The first epoch kicked off when GPS launched in early 1980. On August 21, 1999 GPS receivers reset back to zero. While there was no noticeable disruption, experts say that this was because GPS was not widely used. Next date? April 6, 2019.

Now cybersecurity experts are saying that sheer penetration of GPS in our society could result in the April 6 epoch reset leading to disruptions. In an interview last week, vice president of cybersecurity firm Trend Micro, Bill Malik, went as far as to say he wouldn’t risk flying on April 6, when the week count resets.

For many, a more imminent fear of flying stems from Boeing’s recent failures on its now grounded 737 MAX where it appears faulty sensors have contributed to two of the planes falling from the sky.

The question is have we reached a point where we are putting too much trust in technology?

Another potent illustration of this happened in mid-2017 when a particularly ugly tech wreck reared its head. After a power surge at its Heathrow data centre, British Airways’ IT system fell over, leaving tens of thousands of passengers and their baggage stranded. Part of the problem with this outage was the sheer level of inter-dependency. The power spike caused a chain reaction which took out BA’s entire computer systems. It took 48 hours to restore systems so the airline could recommence flights.

Critics argued that BA should have had (and tested) a backup system and a disaster recovery plan. IT staff and their unions blamed cost-cutting at the airline and outsourcing to India.

Perhaps a less severe but still frustrating example was the recent outage that rendered Gmail, Google Drive and other Google services inoperable around the world, which rippled to (clearly mission critical) Instagram, and coincided with an outage at similarly mission critical Facebook.

Thousands of irate users globally lodged outage reports and complaints ranging from not being able to use Google Docs through to email outages that affected business operations.

Our lives are becoming dependent on vast and unknowable server networks, much of which is often hosted in data centres outside of New Zealand, owned and operated by mega corporations such as Amazon and Microsoft.

The creep of computerisation has seen tech becoming an essential part of virtually all industries as digital technologies such as data analytics, automated logistics and databases help transform industry to become significantly more efficient. Tech has made much of our lives better in many ways. Tedious, complicated and time-consuming chores such as booking flights or banking have become ever more easier, to the greater good of society.

However, with this ease comes a dark side. Humanity is beginning to realise how helpless it is when technology fails.

In the UK, doctors found their computers frozen thanks to a ransomware attack that saw them turning patients away. In the recent Christchurch mosque attacks, ISPs and social media networks watched helplessly as horrific live video footage proliferated faster than networks could detect and remove it.

According to the recent Global Navigation Space Systems: Reliance and Vulnerabilities report from the royal academy of engineering, our over-reliance on GPS technologies could see us particularly exposed to GPS outages.

“Society may already be dangerously over-reliant on satellite radio navigation systems like GPS range of applications using the technology is now so broad that, without adequate independent backup, signal failure or interference could potentially affect safety systems and other critical parts of the economy,” the report warns.

Nowadays GPS is a technology that is part and parcel of many industries ranging from air travel through to emergency services, utilities, financial systems and supply chains.

“The effects would be more widespread (this time) because so many more systems have integrated GPS into their operations…Ports load and unload containers automatically, using GPS to guide the cranes … Public-safety systems incorporate GPS systems, as do traffic-monitoring systems for bridges. Twenty years ago, these links were primitive. Now they are embedded. So, any impact now will be substantially greater,” says Malik.

So, just how seriously are governments taking the week rollover issue? The US Department of Homeland Security issued a memo which says GPS receivers running the latest IS-GPS-200 standard and connected to UTC shouldn’t be adversely affected. They were followed by the New Zealand Measurement Standards Laboratory and the Australian Signals Directorate who both released explainers, recommending that businesses contact GPS equipment manufacturers.

Consumer GPS navigation hardware maker, TomTom says they have already deployed a firmware fix, saying that “if you frequently update your device there’s no need to worry”.

Unless installed systems are connected to a network, as is the case for many automobile and marine systems, those updates will not have happened.

Demand for cloud database solutions is projected to grow as the increasingly data-centric nature of business makes traditional on-premise databases and their management a costly undertaking for many enterprises.

The arguments for cloud database or database-as-a-service (DBaaS) are many, but most boil down to the usual cloud app arguments of flexibility and the fact that the on-demand nature of the cloud can free organisations to focus on their core business while a service provider manages the underlying infrastructure. In short, providing easy access to databases with minimal administration costs is pushing many organisations to move increasingly sizeable on-premise database workloads into the cloud.

According to Orbis Research, demand is growing strongly for DBaaS offerings. Orbis says the emerging cloud database and DBaaS industry had been relatively flat at around 14 percent growth up to 2017. 2018 saw rapid growth in the technology and Orbis is now forecasting that over the next five years, demand for cloud database services will see the DBaaS market surge, with a CAGR over 59 percent.

Two key factors are driving DBaaS growth: Ease of deployment and scalability.

Orbis and most other market analysts tend to agree that two key factors are driving DBaaS growth. These are ease of deployment and scalability. While the debate around DBaaS market inhibitors is robust, the prevailing consensus is that both disaster recovery and security are the key market inhibitor issues for DBaaS.

While medium and small enterprises have been quick to embrace DBaaS, the rapid recent growth is being driven by the large enterprise segment. The fastest growing region for DBaaS has been the Asia Pacific.

Businesses already awash with data are best placed to realise the benefits of DBaaS, but DBaaS isn’t just benefitting enterprises wanting to contain costs. Medium to small business can also realise significant benefits from lower entry barriers and access to technologies that were previously only within reach of their enterprise counterparts. For companies looking to get into the Internet of Things (IoT), data streaming and machine learning (ML), DBaaS offers compelling reasons to leap.

It isn’t all roses though and there are just as many cons as there are pros with DBaaS. Those negatives can include the general rigidity of databases, integration inflexibilities, networking issues and the complexity that comes with managing large data transfers which, let’s face it, are a white-knuckle moment for most CIOs. Because of these and related issues, multi-site data migration requires security precautions.

Further adding to existing complexities is choosing from the many service providers. These range from cloud database specialists, with solutions which have been built for cloud, through to those which are architecturally more akin to remote hosting of your standard on-premise database server. Finding which is the best fit requires navigating and weighing up a long list of variables ranging from price, geography, support/SLA’s and database specs.

US-based Snowflake is arguably the most advanced in ‘pure-play’ DBaaS. The company has built cloud database technology wrapped with data warehouse tooling as a service offering. It saw that conventional data warehouses were struggling to keep up with the exploding demand for data-driven insight within businesses, and were often complex, costly and lacking in flexibility. While there were other ‘big data’ platforms, most lacked flexibility, and many were often toolkits rather than a complete solution. At a practical level, this meant that they required a significant investment in resources to build and maintain. Taking all this into account, Snowflake built a new SQL data warehouse designed to be legacy free and to deliver greater flexibility in a full cloud setting.

Developed as a cloud-based service from the ground up, Snowflake has focused on a platform designed so people could concentrate on deriving insight from data instead of configuring, tuning, and tweaking a data warehouse.

Another fast-moving player in the DBaaS market is MongoDB. It was developed as a low-cost database platform designed with open source software developers in mind instead of database architects.

What makes MongoDB unique is that it provides more flexibility and agility in software development. Traditional databases require users to design a schema in advance. Any changes to that can be challenging to implement. MongoDB allows users to add different data fields relatively easily even after the fact, as it is an unstructured database. Most important of all, MongoDB’s unstructured design lessens the need for costly database administrators. MongoDB products include cloud offerings such as MongoDB Atlas and their serverless platform MongoDB Stitch, both of which has seen MongoDB develop a presence in the DBaaS market.

While Kiwis may be smug when it comes to comparing their broadband to that of their Australian cousins, the shoe is on the other foot for 5G mobile technologies.

As part of a global benchmarking study, consultancy firm Arthur D Little identified Australia as a global leader in terms of its implementation of 5G networks. New Zealand, meanwhile, rated as a follower.

The 5G Country Leadership Index benchmarked 40 countries and found South Korea (who have already installed over 10,000 5G cell sites) to be the world leader in 5G. The US, Australia, Qatar, Finland and Switzerland followed.

“Leaders in the study already have 5G spectrum allocated, backhaul in place and have either launched 5G or are trialling it.”

The Index consisted of analysis of technical infrastructure and 5G commercialisation. The leaders identified in the study already have 5G spectrum allocated, backhaul in place and have either launched 5G or are trialling it.

So how big is the 5G gap between Australia and New Zealand?

At the end of 2018, 5G spectrum auctions concluded in Australia. Four companies won 5G spectrum in the 3.6 GHz band. All 350 spectrum slots were sold, earning the Australian government an estimated AU$853 million.

Spectrum winners included Dense Air Australia who scored 29 spectrum lots for AU$18.5 million. Mobile JV, which is a joint venture between TPG Telecom and Vodafone Hutchison Australia took out 131 spectrum lots for AU$263.3 million. Optus garnered 47 spectrum lots valued at AU$185.1 million, while Telstra won the lion’s share, with 143 spectrum lots purchased for AU$386 million.

New Zealand, by comparison, has yet to get any spectrum onto the 5G starting blocks.

Kris Faafoi, the Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital media only recently announced the availability of the 3.5 GHz band spectrum for 5G and its auction in 2020 – two years after Australia.

While Kiwi telcos gear up for 5G, Optus is already there. They have begun to invite customers in selected 5G coverage areas to take up 5G fixed wireless broadband plans. By talking up unlimited data and a minimum throughput of 50Mbps, it is likely that many will see Optus’s 5G plans as a viable NBN alternative. Optus says that their first 5G mobile services will go live in the first half of 2019.

Telstra has yet to confirm when or if they will offer 5G fixed wireless broadband, but the prevailing wisdom is that it is highly likely. Speculation got helped when Telstra unveiled their first 5G modem in December and their 5G network is already going live within selected areas of Australia. Optus promise 1,200 5G cell sites across five Australian states by 2020. Vodafone has indicated that they will follow Optus and Telstra, switching on their 5G network in 2020.

While the move to bar Huawei from Australian 5G builds seems to not have affected Australia’s 5G roll-out, some are questioning the security motives underpinning the ban.

Fears of Chinese state-sponsored spying saw Huawei banned, and that same sentiment could see equipment from other Chinese suppliers also barred from Australia’s 5G supply chain. The reality, however, is that removing all Chinese networking gear from Australian 5G installations is close to impossible.

The United States 2018 Report to Congress submitted by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission echoes this point. “US firms and the US government rely on global supply chains that in many cases are dominated by China. While not all products designed, manufactured or assembled in China are inherently risky, the US government lacks essential tools to conduct rigorous supply chain risk assessments.”

If the US cannot be confident its 5G network is secure from perceived Chinese security risks – even if they use gear made in the USA – how can other countries including Australia and New Zealand be confident their 5G networks are secure?

Huawei controversy aside, all things 5G related seem to be progressing at a significantly slower pace in New Zealand. The incumbent telco, Spark, launched a 5G innovations lab in 2018 and has conducted several 5G demonstrations. According to a discussion document from the telco, it is currently in the preparation phase which involves ‘densifying’ cell sites for 5G coverage.

Assuming spectrum auctions go smoothly, all three Kiwi mobile operators expect to go live with a 5G offering in mid to late 2020 at the earliest. The pressure is on for Spark which has plans for a full 5G immersion experience for the Americas Cup sailing regatta, in March 2021.

So, what will 5G look like in New Zealand?

It is probable that 5G will be held back by variants of 4.5G. Sweating existing infrastructure to offer faster data speeds makes much economic sense given players such as Spark had already invested heavily in 4.5G which is also in theory capable of gigabit mobile data speeds.

Beyond 4.5G, the first real 5G offerings are expected to consist of 5G fixed wireless broadband. For all three mobile operators, the economics are likely to prove compelling. Presently, retail arrangements mean they must hand over a chunk of fibre sales margins to wholesale provider Chorus. Using 5G would allow them to bypass Chorus and retain all the margin, making a 5G fixed wireless broadband offering a much more profitable option.

Another big issue is devices. The handsets for 5G are still relatively rare, with only Samsung set to launch the 5G capable Galaxy S10 in New Zealand in the foreseeable future. Huawei, Oppo and several other vendors all announced 5G capable smartphones, but these are unlikely to reach New Zealand until mid-2019 at the earliest. With 5G having already delivered close to 9Gbps, existing mobile data plans are also unlikely to be practical. Building plans with enough data (or even unlimited data) will require a delicate balancing act for telcos seeking a return on investment.

The internet of things is another attractive market for telcos. The big appeal with IoT is that 5G is significantly more scalable than 4G in the machine-to-machine space, meaning it can scale to handle data beamed from thousands, or even millions, of devices. While speed is not expected to be a consideration, 5G’s promised low latency could be a point of difference in specific IOT applications. A key hurdle for telcos will be the existing four IoT networks already in place. Seeking a return on investment in the IoT space when there is already plenty of designed-for-IoT network capacity could prove challenging.

For telcos such as Spark with system integrator capabilities, the low latency and high bandwidth capabilities of 5G could also prove compelling. At the recent Mobile World Congress, Huawei demonstrated thin client video game consoles whose purpose was to stream games rendered in the cloud. Given the near real-time requirements of gaming, it is fair to assume that thin client computing and enterprise cloud applications over 5G could also be on the cards.

Huawei’s chairperson has agreed with comments from US President Donald Trump about the future of US mobile communications as Washington and Beijing attempt to broker a ceasefire amidst fears that the US/China trade war could tip the global economy into recession.

China’s flagship telco company has been thrown into the epicentre of the trade dispute with the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s CFO in Canada, while Washington also accused Huawei of breaking sanctions and intellectual property theft, along with allegations that Huawei assists Chinese state espionage operations.

“Prism, prism on the wall. Who’s the most trustworthy of them all?”

At a media round table at the MWC (#MWC19) in Barcelona, Huawei chairman Guo Ping agreed and expanded on a recent Trump tweet, saying “I have noticed the president’s Twitter. He said that the US needs faster and smarter 5G or even 6G in the future, and he has realised that the US is lagging in this respect, and I think his message is clear and correct.”

In his keynote speech Ping also re-stated Huawei’s commitment to security saying “let me say this as clearly as possible: Huawei has not and will never plant backdoors. And we will never allow anyone to do so in our equipment. We take this responsibility very seriously.”

Taking aim directly at the US, Ping said “Huawei has had a strong track record in security for three decades, serving three billion people around the world. The US security accusation on our 5G has no evidence, nothing”.

Injecting a note of humour in his delivery, Ping also countered with “Prism, prism on the wall. Who’s the most trustworthy of them all? It’s an important question to ask. And if you don’t understand this question, go ask Edward Snowden.”

The debate was further fuelled by comments last week from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who said the Chinese telecom giant threatens the ability for Europe to work alongside the United States.

“If a country adopts this and puts it in some of their critical information systems, we won’t be able to share information with them,” Pompeo said to FOX Business’ (no less) in a live interview on Thursday. “In some cases there’s risk – we won’t even be able to co-locate American resources, an American embassy and American military outpost.”

Pompeo added that Huawei technology also presents security risks to Europeans.

“We can’t forget these systems were designed with the express work alongside the Chinese PLA, their military in China,” he said. “The risk to privacy from this technology is very, very real.”

He also extended the warnings to other countries, confirming the diplomatic pressure that is being placed on New Zealand and UK governments.

“Over the past months we’ve been out around the world just making sure everyone had the same information, that countries understand the risk of putting this Huawei technology into their IT systems.”

Has a more high profile business-political spat ever reached such lows?

Trump’s tweets however do appear to have softened on the US/China trade dispute, with his latest splutterings being seen as signalling a departure from the hardline US position that Huawei should be barred from Western networks.

Trump original tweet said: “I want 5G, and even 6G, technology in the United States as soon as possible. It is far more powerful, faster and smarter than the current standard. American companies must step up their efforts, or get left behind. There is no reason that we should be lagging on something that is so obviously the future.”

While 6G may count as a classic Trumpism (along with covfefe and so many others), his tweets – for a change – were not a direct attack on Huawei.

Yet Huawei remains locked out of lucrative US government and carrier contracts. Lobbying by the US has also seen Australia barring Huawei’s 5G technology from use by local telco providers, while New Zealand and the UK are on the verge of decisions that will ripple globally.

Meanwhile, Ping’s comments have been backed up by recent announcements from the UK and EU intelligence agencies, with a report from the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), concluding that any potential security threats posed by Huawei’s equipment can be mitigated. Similarly, a meeting of the German cabinet delving into a report by their security services that said they had failed to find any evidence of spying by Huawei. The findings of both the UK and Germany carry considerable weight and could see US lobbying around Huawei rejected by other EU countries.

During the round table, Ping also touched on how Huawei views telco security. He said technology suppliers have a responsibility to supply secure equipment, and carriers are responsible for their network security. He said while both need to work with regulators, cybersecurity needs to be based on fact rather than politics.

“To build safer networks, we need to standardise cybersecurity requirements. And these standards must be verifiable for all vendors and all carriers.” He went on to say that “We need to have a unified standard that should be verifiable. It should not be based on politics, but fact.”