Avondale (Vodafone/Woosh)

Address: Blockhouse Bay and Rosebank Roads, Avondale

November 2004: Closer-up of Vodafone’s site.

November 2004: Closer-up of Woosh Wireless’s site.

Waimarie Street (Vodafone/Woosh)

January 2004

This site serves an unusual position as a passive microwave relay for Vodafone between the St Heliers Bay and Glendowie sites. Vodafone does not currently run any cellular (GSM or UMTS) services from this site.

Woosh Wireless uses this site for their wireless broadband service, as well as some microwave links to other sites in the area. There are also some other radio antennas here — I don’t know who owns these antennas and for what purposes. Possibly some antennas are operated by Metrowater in relation to the water tower.

Bastion Point (Telecom/Vodafone)

December 2003: Overview of the site. Vodafone’s antennas are on the light pole to the right, while Telecom has their fitted to the side of the orange building.

December 2004: About one year later! Vodafone has upgraded the antennas at this site to dual-band antennas for both 2G GSM and 3G UMTS services.

December 2004: This is a close-up of Telecom’s antenna. As you can see it is pained using the same colour as the building it is attached to.

This site was established by both networks in the late 1990’s to resolve coverage issues along this part of Tamaki Drive — where mobiles struggle to receive a suitable signal from Orakei, Okahu Bay and/or St Heliers Bay cell sites. I imange that this area generated a lot of dropped calls before this site was established. It is also near Kelly Tarltons, a popular underground water attraction, so I suppose this site also improves underground reception down there.

I did not see Telecom’s antennas despite passing this building each morning on my way to school, until I suddenly discovered them one day while just relaxand and looking out the window! I suppose it proves that Telecom’s design is more camouflaged than Vodafone’s! Vodafone’s new dual-band antennas for their 3G services has actually made their site look even worse — I’m of the opinion that Vodafone could have made more effort here to blend in with the surrounding enviroment.

Naming Convention Note:
Vodafone calls this site ‘Tamaki Drive’ – contradicting Telecom who calls it ‘Bastion Point’. I have chosen to use the latter name since it is a more precise description of the location of this site.

Mission Bay (Telecom/Vodafone/Woosh)

December 2003: Overview of the original site. Vodafone has three pairs of sector antennas (for the 2G GSM network) on top of the building in the foreground while Telecom has their onmi-directional antennas on top of the light pole to the left, behind the building.

July 2004: The right-hand-side antennas were replaced with 3G UMTS antennas.

December 2004: Overview of the site after the 3G upgrade.

December 2004: This is a lightly better view of Telecom’s site. Their antennas are on top of the two light poles to the right and there is a third on a lightpole out of the frame to the left. This is a very discreet design, however I don’t think it will survive an upgrade to sector antenna in the future — which will happen when Telecom requires more capacity at this site. When sectorisation happens they will probaly have to relocate to the top of the building. Vodafone’s site can be found in the background.

August 2005: Woosh Wireless joined the site during 2005, adding their 3G UMTS antennas between Vodafone’s antennas. It’s interesting to see how small Woosh’s 3G antennas are compared to Vodafone’s 3G antennas. At this point Woosh had not linked their site into the network — that can be seen by the fact they had not yet attached a microwave dish to the little silver pole in front of the UMTS antennas.

In the foreground is Vodafone’s site. Their sector antennas are on top of the apartment building. Telecom, on the other hand, have their antennas on top of the light poles in the background to the left, behind the apartment building.

Records seems to indicate that this is Vodafone’s second site in Mission Bay. Vodafone had their original site at a different location but later relocated to this site. I am not sure about the reason for the relocation to this building. Perhaps Vodafone felt that they would get better coverage from a taller building?