Behind the NEAX Decommissioning Project

Mike Evertzen has been Programme Manager for Network Decommission Delivery at Spark New Zealand since 2016, overseeing what many consider one of the most complex infrastructure transitions in the country’s history.

“When we started this programme, we inherited technology that had been the backbone of New Zealand’s communications for four decades,” Evertzen explains. “The NEC NEAX 61 series switches weren’t just equipment – they were the foundation of how New Zealanders stayed connected.”

“The technology has served us well, but we’re in uncharted territory when it comes to equipment that’s been running for this long,” he adds. “We had to act before we started seeing serious operational challenges across our network.”

The challenge facing Spark was unprecedented. NEC had stopped manufacturing spare parts for the NEAX technology in 2003. As a result, Spark was forced to scour international grey markets, sourcing components from as far as Malaysia and Bhutan just to keep the network operational. Critical components were being stored in locked safes due to their scarcity and importance.

Technical expertise in the legacy equipment is also a dwindling resource, says Evertzen.

“Our intellectual property is literally retiring,” he says. “We have people north of 60, 67, 68 years old who were the only ones with the knowledge to maintain this equipment,” he says.

“Ultimately, we were facing the very real possibility of catastrophic network failure.”

Safely retiring four decades of critical infrastructure while ensuring millions of customers never lose service is no small feat. It requires deep knowledge of the increasingly obsolete switching technology, understanding of intricate system interdependencies, and coordinating a nationwide programme across hundreds of sites – all while maintaining the reliability that New Zealanders have come to expect.

After initially working with NEC and later Chorus, Spark needed a new approach when Chorus indicated in 2019 that they no longer wanted to continue with the baseband IP technology for large scale migrations – a bridging solution that emulated the old telephone network over modern internet infrastructure, allowing customers to keep using their existing phones while the underlying technology was upgraded. Spark, working with Huawei & NiceUC was able to introduce a replacement technology similar to baseband IP that would allow for the continuance of migrating customers from the NEAX switches onto the Spark Converged Communications Network.

Entelar Group stepped forward as the natural successor to take on this critical work to deploy the new technology and then remove the NEAXs once all customers were migrated across. To ensure continuity of technical know-how, many of the skilled technicians who had been maintaining the NEAX systems transitioned from NEC to Entelar Group, bringing with them decades of irreplaceable knowledge about the equipment’s quirks, maintenance requirements, and operational characteristics.

“It wasn’t just about finding a contractor – it was about finding a partner who could inherit the essential operational understanding required to safely decommission infrastructure that had been running for 40 years,” explains Evertzen.

“We needed people who understood this equipment. You can’t go out on the street and hire people that can do this – every site is different, and that expertise can’t be taught quickly. It’s all based on organically grown sort of knowledge within the business.”

This partnership between Spark and Entelar Group has evolved into a sophisticated operational machine, processing sites with methodical precision across the country.

The network architecture operates on a hierarchical system: large host switches in major centres connect to smaller remote switches in suburban and rural areas – like a mother and child relationship.

Migration teams plan and execute the customer migrations that must happen before any equipment can be removed – a process that can take anywhere from one week for smaller switches to three weeks for larger installations.

“You can only switch the main unit off after you’ve turned all the remote switches off,” explains Evertzen. “So our whole strategy has been outside-in” – working from the network edges toward the core centres where the major switches consume the most power and resources. “We’re now getting to the point where we are turning off some of the big switches where most of the power consumption and cost sits.”

After migration is complete, the Entelar team goes in to power down and remove the switches.
While each site has its own nuances, the process has become very refined, averaging between 50-55 switches per year. The recent decommissioning of the Courtenay Place exchange in Wellington – one of New Zealand’s biggest switches serving 12,000-15,000 customers – required shutting down ten remote units across different parts of Wellington before the main switch could be turned off.

Throughout this intricate process, the overriding commitment remains ensuring seamless connectivity – no customer can lose service, even for a moment.

“The customer will pick up their phone and get a dial tone,” says Evertzen. “Everything else that happens in the background doesn’t mean anything if the customer doesn’t get that dial tone.”

Once the power is switched off and the equipment removed, Entelar Group’s work is far from over – in fact, it’s just beginning. The Group ensures that every decommissioned component is responsibly processed and recycled.

Kyla Petrie, Replenishment Lead at Entelar Group, has witnessed this transition firsthand and says that, while the scope of the project is immense, there is a recycling path for everything.

“These NEAX switches can take up the whole floor of a building, and we’re replacing them with equipment that’s not much wider than a laptop and maybe three to four inches thick,” says Petrie.

“But nothing goes to landfill. Everything is recycled right down to nuts, bolts, and cables. Some of our larger exchanges can fill up a 40-foot container quite nicely, but everything – everything – goes somewhere to be recycled and refined or repurposed.”

“The rack frames contain substantial amounts of steel. Circuit boards yield precious metals including gold and palladium. Even the extensive cabling infrastructure represents significant quantities of recyclable copper.” Working with e-waste recycling partners like Echo Tech, Entelar Group’s sophisticated reverse logistics operation is setting new industry standards for telecommunications equipment recovery.

“We’ve matured this process to the point where our technicians can always find a sustainable solution. What started as a challenge of managing massive volumes of retired equipment has become an industry-leading sustainability programme that recovers value from every single retired component”.

Each decommissioned switch represents substantial reduction in power consumption too. The old NEAX equipment was notably power-hungry, requiring significant air conditioning to keep cool. The new technology runs cold and consumes less than a tenth of the power of the equipment it replaces, with each switch removal eliminating some 234 kilowatts of annual consumption—equivalent to permanently switching off 234 one-bar heaters running 24/7.

As the project enters its final phase – completion is expected by the end of 2028 – its transformative impact is becoming clearer.

“This transition enables Sparks complete exit from the aging NEC NEAX technology and the Chorus copper network, supporting the move to fiber and wireless technologies,” says Evertzen. “Staying on this old network wasn’t working for anyone. At some point, we weren’t going to be able to continue operating it, so what we’re really doing is building a more resilient foundation for New Zealand’s communications future.”

“For customers, when they pick up their phones, they’ll notice nothing but improved reliability.”

That seamless experience, delivered through the partnership between Spark and Entelar Group, represents the true measure of success.

When the final NEAX switch is powered down in 2028, New Zealand will have completed one of the world’s most complex telecommunications transitions- retiring four decades of critical infrastructure while seamlessly migrating nearly two million customer connections to modern technology.