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As New Zealand works to pull the plug on the 3G network by Christmas, telecos aim to avoid the debacle that happened in Australia when it did the same last year.
Paul Brislen is on a mission this year and it could probably be summed up as: 'don't stuff things up like Australia did'.
It is to do with New Zealand's 3G networks being shut down by the end of 2025, and upgraded to the next generation of technology.
It is a world-wide move and Australia turned its 3G off last year. The trouble is, the repercussions are still going on there - to the extent that a Senate committee is investigating why some customers were left worse off, unable to make calls or send text messages in areas where they previously could - and that included emergency calls.
Brislen is the chief executive of the New Zealand Telecommunications Forum, a quasi-regulatory body in charge of dealing with umbrella issues in the sector.
He says we will be hearing a lot of him this year as he pushes the message that by Christmas, anyone whose device relies on 3G to work will have had to replace it. That could mean tens of thousands of people.
Working out if that is you is not as easy as reading your phone to see what you are operating on.
"All the phones around today use 3G," he says. "You'll see it quite often on your handset when you are travelling around the country, you'll see it will pop up, it will connect to whatever network your phone wants to connect to.
"So at the moment everybody's using it. The problem is if your phone will only use 3G, or if it's reliant on 3G for various bits and pieces. And that is a problem because that will not connect to anything come early next year."
Our three mobile network operators - Spark, 2degrees and One NZ - are upgrading their sites to either 4G or 5G now.
You may not have to throw out your phone - in fact you should not throw it out, you need to recycle it - but you may have to take it into your provider and get a setting changed.
"Unfortunately there's no simple way to say, 'if you've got one of these, it won't work'," he says. "You actually have to check. New Zealand is wide open, we're very transparent when it comes to phones coming into the country, you can bring them in from overseas... we don't track all of the devices that come in and some of them are set up in a way that's different in other countries to the way we set them up in New Zealand - they may not work."
For those old bricks though, it is going to become clear that a new phone is in order.
Brislen says in the coming weeks there will be an announcement of a short code you can text to check to see if you are okay, if your phone needs replacing, or if it's in a 'grey area'.
The 3G technology has been around since the early 2000s - considered ancient in the tech world - and is now out of date. 4G and 5G are much faster and more internet-connected.
Phones are not the only issue with the changeover - some lifts, air conditioning, medical devices including pacemakers, electric vehicle chargers, security systems and burglar alarms use 3G. Brislen is making his way through companies whose devices connect to the internet to alert them to potential issues.
The Detail also talks to e-waste expert Patrick Moynahan from Echotech, on the importance of safe disposal of devices that contain lithium and other rare earth minerals, many of which are a fire risk.
He tells Amanda Gillies that there are more than 10 fires a week in New Zealand caused by batteries, often in landfills or rubbish trucks after people have dumped their old phones or gaming controllers in the bin - and that is just what gets reported.
"Five rubbish trucks and recycling trucks caught fire the first two weeks of 2025 alone."
Moynahan says there would be a significantly higher number of phones disposed of that way than recycled properly.
"For me, it's wasteful. There's no regulation in the New Zealand market so there's not a tremendous amount of awareness for consumers."
But if your phone ends up in landfill, chances are the toxic chemicals inside it will leach out into waterways or soil.
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