This is an excellent article Dan for travellers to the Land of the Long White Cloud. This update from March 2012 will help new Australian travellers to NZ with Telstra iPhones taking up a Telecom NZ SIM option.

First you must unlock your iPhone before you leave Oz [even if you are still on contract this works]. Check out and read carefully including linking to iTunes to seal the unlock deal:

http://exchange.telstra.com.au/2010/10/15/telstra-removes-unlock-fee-for-apple-iphone-for-jet-setting-aussies/comment-page-5/

In Auckland airport the Telecom NZ booth is right opposite your exit door from Customs and Immigration. It is open pretty much all hours even weekends till late at night!

The staff will suggest you buy a Plan Only Pay as you go with a NZ mobile number (free). You need to buy a TNZ SIM (NZ$29.95). The iPhone 4 uses a microSIM which is normally $10 more but they didn't charge me this. This gets 500MB Mobile Broadband Prepaid. It is a good idea to get a $40 Telecom Prepaid Mobile E Voucher which gives you 40 minutes NZ talk time plus 5 minutes from the SIM purchase and 1000 free texts. You will get reminders every time you call that you only have 5 min talk time left but a TNZ website shows your actual 40 minute balance.You can top up as in the article above.

This is a good deal - our car hire company had 500MB Broadband 'packages' for $150 and no calls included. Calls in NZ are normally not cheap so again the TNZ package for NZ$69.95 is good traveller value. TNZ coverage is pretty good throughout the North Island where we travelled but limited in National Parks and low population areas.

You can order a 2 Degrees SIM before you depart from mobipassport.com.au

I've had a 2degrees Sim for a while now and love it in AKL and WLG - however worth noting it didn't work in Rotorua last week when I was over there...

Weird -- 2deg says it covers Rotovegas. What did you try to get it to work while you were there?

It seems unusual that you are so willing to dismiss Vodafone so quickly. They are the largest mobile telco in NZ by market share with just under half of the market.

They don't have the same performance issues as their Australian counterpart has.

Telecom NZ had some very bad outages on their network a couple of years ago.

2degrees has a small network covering only about 20 cities/urban areas. Outside of that 2degrees roams on the Vodafone network.

Sure, Vodafone's big, but they're worse value than the others and their network's the worst of the three in the major cities.

They certainly do have similar performance issues to Vodafone AU -- worse, in some cases -- and that's current, tested-last-week-in-Wellington (plus reports from Auckland, Christchurch and rural NZ), not two years ago.

And yes, as I said, 2degrees is best for cities: the detail that it roams onto Vodafone's exceedingly patchy network is why.

I've got to agree with richie9x. Vodafone is by far the largest player in the mobile telecommunications market in NZ, and has a very stable market. I wouldn;t be too quick to dismiss this major player, who offers packages identical to those mentioned in this article.

Being Kiwi based, I have used Vodafone for years and I've yet to encounter any kind of the patchy network which described, and is just as reliable as Telecom. In fact, I recall when Telecom's XT network was launched and there was a plethora of complaints about network failures with it. 

Another small-time telco which most business travelers will probably look past is the Telecom subsidary called Skinny. It is largely targeted at the teen/young adult market but has weekly "combos" priced at only NZD4. That's not half bad considering it includes data, minutes and txts, depending on the combo. It runs on the Telecom network, so should have no major network issues. Probably not the first option for many business travelers due to the marketing and combo packages available, but a good option nonetheless.

Nick, I've spent several months a year in NZ for the last three years -- mostly in Wellington, but with multiple trips to Auckland, Christchurch, various wine hubs and across rural NZ.

I tend to travel with a Telecom SIM in my phone, a Vodafone SIM in my iPad and a 2degrees SIM in my pocket wifi router to compare the lot frequently, swapping them around when I want to compare them a little more scientifically.

Vodafone's packages aren't identical as you suggest.

Vodafone's network is worse than Telecom's (there are still problems in Wellington, let alone the rural network) and its bundles are marginally worse value (by ten minutes of included airtime). Why would anyone pick Vodafone instead of Telecom?

As I mentioned in the article, Vodafone does have a $19 package. But its mobile broadband packs are the same price as Telecom for 2GB, at which point value gets worse because you can only purchase 512MB for $30 (compared with Telecom allowing you two bites at the 2GB-for-$50 cherry). 2degrees blows Vodafone (and Telecom) out of the park on urban data value. Why would anyone pick Vodafone?

Whenever I take straw polls of mobile networks from people I talk to in NZ -- friends, travel industry pros, wine folk -- they nearly uniformly slate Vodafone, and are only with the network because they're on a long device-related term or they've a work phone via a corporate contract. I'd be interested to know why you're with Vodafone.

I omitted Skinny for the marketing reasons and more -- the sales points aren't as one-stop convenient (being mainly Dick Smith/The Warehouse type big box stores) as the network shops, plus the weekly packages (and overage rates) seem like a lot of faff. I do like their $4 per week plus $8 for 600 MB a week as value, though, and I hope they succeed and shake up the market enough that I can pop them in when I next come to revise this guide!

I my experience trying to find a sim card upon arrival in LAX, there are two key factors travelers look for when choosing a mobile provider: Price and convenience. Due to the similarity of prices between networks, convenience is the deciding factor for me.

Due to Vodafone enjoying its status as the largest provider within NZ, it has some competitive advantages over its competitors. Travelers arriving at Auckland, Christchurch and Queenstown airports ware able to take advantage of the on-site Vodafone store, whilst I believe Telecom only has a presence at Auckland Airport. And from my experience, I have found there are many more places which sell Vodafone products, so adding money to your balance is comparatiely easier. However this may be due to the popularity of Vodafone within northern NZ, so may not be true of the rest of the country.

Another nice thing about Vodafone is the ability to top-up prepay balances via ATM machine.

Similar to your experience, I have also used both Vodafone and 2Degrees (not Telecom however), and find no noticeable differences in cover throughout my travels. I have never had a dropped call from either network, and time I have encountered difficulty in sending a txt was during the RWC in the heart of Auckland, when the city was swamped by hundreds of thousands of keen rugby goers!

A good article, however I feel that more information should be given about Vodafone, due to the reasons outlined, should the article be updated.

You're right about the convenience: on first glance it might indeed make sense for Christchurch and Queenstown business travellers to pick up a Vodafone SIM from the airport.

The problem is that those business travellers are very likely to be using CHC or ZQN as a launching point for rural NZ -- at which point Vodafone's weaker network becomes a serious drawback.

My take is that most business travellers will be topping up with a card over the phone -- I certainly find that more convenient than having to find an ATM or somewhere to buy a voucher.

And of course you wouldn't notice a coverage difference between Vodafone and 2degrees -- anywhere 2degrees has coverage Vodafone is bound to, and anywhere 2degrees doesn't have coverage it roams onto Vodafone!

I'm still comfortable with my call that Vodafone is the least attractive network for business travellers, with the slight proviso that Vodafone AU customers may find their data roaming bundle convenient.