Spark New Zealand opens 5G Co-Lab space

Spark New Zealand, the Auckland based telecommunications firm, has opened a space for 5G business development.

Located In Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter, the 5G Co-Lab space is an extension of its interactive 5G lab. Businesses will be able to use the space to innovate with unrestricted access to a 5G network.

“We believe that the most amazing things you can do with 5G haven’t been invented yet, so we have based some of our technical engineers here for our customers and partners to come in and collaborate on co-creating the future of 5G,” said Spark’s General Manager of Value Management Raj Singh.
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Three businesses have utilised the space prior to its official opening as exemplars of what is possible using the space, those being The Patience Project, Paymark and Ohmio. The latter has been developing a 5G connected driverless car that benefits from the low latency of 5G, while Paymark has been exploring 5G enhanced methods of payment such as facial recognition. The Patience Project is a charity using virtual reality to combat social isolation for children with long-term illnesses.

“We’re really excited to have the Patience Project in Spark’s 5G Co-Lab space and are thrilled to see that with the help of Spark’s network team and 5G technology, the Patience Project will have the potential to reach far more children experiencing long-term illness due to its ability to not rely on expensive hardware and utilise more cost-effective technologies such as cloud computing. This means that the 360-degree camera can be wireless and will no longer be stuck in one classroom but have the ability to move from class to class, or even go on field trips,” said Singh.