A podcast discussing Spark's proposal to replace aging public phone booths with free, modern digital units across New Zealand, highlighting tensions with Auckland Council over revenue sharing and the feasibility of a sustainable, nationwide rollout.
Stacked weekly counts; colour by lean. “n/a” covers government and iwi-Māori sources where lean isn't applicable.
How this topic has been named, week by week. A new alias winning out is usually a framing shift.
Verbatim segments from politicians speaking on podcasts and radio shows about this topic. Sourced via the voice-reference library — each speaker has been confirmed manually from their voice clip. Click play to stream the original audio from the publisher, pre-seeked to the moment the quote starts.
So the reality is with the phone booth network, it has always been underpinned by a commercial model. So they've always been revenue generating. In the past, it's been obviously the coin or the phone card that you use to make a call, so it's been user pays. What we're trying to do is flip the model. So user doesn't pay. Um the connectivity is free, but the overall investment is funded through the digital advertising. And we're only talking about 150 of them in Auckland, so they're not going to be spotting every street wherever you go, just strategically placed within communities or busy areas. Um but the challenge is that to invest in this infrastructure, there is a significant upfront capital investment. There's also the ongoing cost of the free connectivity of maintenance, cleaning, repairing them if they get damaged, upgrades, etc. And all of those costs are borne by Spark and by our partner OMEDia. So if you then go and split that revenue with um councils and roading authorities all around the country where these phone booths are placed, well then the business case very quickly falls over and it's no longer sustainable.
Up to 12 framings spread across orientations. Each framing is a short phrase the topic extractor generated to characterise the piece's stance — not a quote from the source. Click through to read the original.
technological obsolescence driving change
Leela Ashford: Spark Chief Brand Officer on the clash between Spark and Auckland Council over the city's phone boothsSpotted something wrong on this page? Report a correction.
