The Radio Spectrum Management (RSM) team which falls under the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) says it has successfully blocked access for Kiwis to buy devices that contain radios that are non-compliant with local regulations.
Such products can be found online on Alibaba/AliExpress, eBay, Facebook, Amazon and even Trade Me. The problem here, RSM's national manager Claire Smollett explained, is that the devices can operate in licensed channels. That in turn can cause interference with critical communications systems, in for example aircraft and ambulances.
RSM didn't give many specifics as to the devices, but Smollett mentioned a baby monitor bought online that the agency managed to track down, which was interfering with One NZ's network.
"The device was emitting signals that disrupted local communications services, that led to us having to request the owner to stop using it," Smollett said.
Which was very nice of RSM, as legally, the owner of the interfering baby monitor could've been hit up for up to $30,000 in penalties. Body corporates can be penalised up to $200,000 for squelching radio comms.
Global Positioning System (GPS) and mobile phone jammers are completely banned in New Zealand, RSM said. Devices need to have the Regulatory Compliance Mark (RCM), which looks like this:
There's also the R-NZ mark on wireless radio transmitting and other electronic devices, RSM said.
Some products require a licence as well.
Over 35,000 non-compliant products were targeted by the RSM, which partnered with the above mentioned market places. The problem here is that many people are not aware that devices with radios bought overseas can cause interference, even though the onus is on the purchaser to ensure that the gear is compliant with local regulations.
Update I was wondering how the blocking of the 35,000 products at the market places - most of which are overseas - is done, and Claire Smollett got back with some answers:
"RSM uses a combination of techniques to ensure non-compliant radio products are not available for purchase in New Zealand. Geo-blocking is one such approach, but it doesn’t involve blocking New Zealand IP address ranges. Instead, online marketplaces like Temu and Alibaba work with sellers to restrict visibility of non-compliant products to New Zealand users," Smollett said.
"For example, these products may still exist on the platform and be available for sale to other countries, but they are flagged as “not for sale” in New Zealand. This means they won’t show up in search results or will be marked as unavailable for shipping to New Zealand addresses," she added.
"In other cases, we’ve worked with platforms to have listings removed entirely, particularly when geo-blocking isn’t an option, or the product poses significant risks. For example, Facebook marketplace trend of listings removed not geo blocked."
"By collaborating with these platforms, we’ve successfully addressed over 35,000 listings during the last financial year, giving New Zealand consumers better protection from harmful interference caused by non-compliant devices," Smollett said.
16 Comments
Yes, but isn't it nice to live in a society that has plenty of jobs in manufacturing, production, food supply, retail, repairs and maintenance, transport, offering secure jobs that provide enough income to pay the bills and keep a roof over our heads? Wait, that is become a distant dream for many. And I think thats my point, we all need each other to be a successful country. We need profitability to ensure that we keep the wheels turning around the whole country. We need to become community and country orientated again. Buy NZ made.
"...we all need each other to be a successful country. We need profitability to ensure that we keep the wheels turning around the whole country. We need to become community and country orientated again. Buy NZ made."
Some of us are old enough to remember the ripoff ticket clipping protection rorts engendered by buy local policies supported by domestic mfg & unions that impoverished the many for the benefit of the few. In many cases businesses importing exactly the same products as we can now do for ourselves for a fraction of the price.
You're citing a very broad range of different markets there, that all have very different characteristics. Maybe we should concentrate on places we can add local advantage to employ people.
To separate out consumer good manufacturing and retail - our market size and distance from others precludes ever having the ability to competitively produce most consumer goods, and the majority of those enterprises now import from efficient high volume manufacturing concerns. What sites like Ali Express, Amazon, Etsy, Temu and the rest have allowed consumers to do is disintermediate a lot of the consumer supply chain that, in New Zealand, adds very little value and simply can't offer the consumer choice available overseas.
Should jobs that are essentially ticket-punching be subsidised by consumers?
In industrial products, similar applies: we simply are not big enough to efficiently manufacture anything that isn't a high value add, and low freight cost. So: software, and maybe high technology products - although we are not geologically stable enough for a semiconductor industry. The markets for things like building products and motor vehicles are broken, and cost add has hugely outpaced value add: why do we need large bricks-and-mortar retailers for commodity items like framing timber, plasterboard, Corollas and the like? The moves by people like Tesla, where everything is in-house, are positive, but we have too few dominant players invested in a complex status-quo where no-value-add is the norm.
Maybe we need to stick to areas, like software, agro/bio-technology and the like where distance isn't such an issue and where we have a local advantage.
Transport already employs a lot of people, but our systems are not efficient becasue our transport infrastructure is degrading, and there's no prospect of coordinated, evidence-driven action from government to change that. It's being left to the market and the market is dominated by road-freight interests.
Short of a complete change of mindset and policy that pries vested interests away from our transport practices, I have no ideas.
We do have a local advantage in food and agricultural products and that would be a great opportunity. However: we keep exporting commodities, rather than adding value here. As to why, I'd suggest: historical reasons that have led to the control of this sector by a particular mind-set that sees it as so much simpler and adequately profitable to export commodities and that there are too few large players of that mind-set, investment in physical product value add is hard to come by as the property market is a privileged investment vehicle that soaks up money, and our regulatory environment's complexity and multi-authority nature is inimical to innovation.
The regulatory environment to grow competitive local industry is problematic. I was doing supply chain in industrial manufacturing in the days when import substitution regulations to protect local industry were in force. The degree of regulation made it painful and expensive to make anything here using any imported content. Consumer goods were worse, where stiff tariffs were imposed to protect local industry who had no incentive to produce good quality products, and the bureaucracy around the heavy-handed regulations was mind boggling. It doesn't help that the government organisations tasked with running our industrial policy are largely made up of professional public servants, who mostly have no experience of what they are trying to administer.
As a historical example of where we've come from: in the 1970s my father wanted an evaporative (swamp) cooler for my grandmother, who suffered in the hot, dry summers on the Canterbury plains. The nearest place to get one was Australia, but to be allowed an import licence we had to (among other things) demonstrate we had access to foreign exchange, collect a letter from her doctor to demonstrate need, and stump up nearly half the price of the cooler again in duty becasue there might be a firm in New Zealand to protect (there wasn't). The duty exemption process was Kafka-esque. You had to write to all the possible local manufacturers and importers to demonstrate that there wasn't a local business you would disadvantage: essentially looking for proof of non-existence. My father just coughed up the money.
Do we really want to go back to that kind of protectionism to protect areas we can never be competitive in?
Unending pain. I worked in the technical end of the manufacturing supply chain right at the end of that era. At some points I was going to customs to explain things about the shipments of parts customs were holding up about once a week. Typically, that was when the customs people got job rotated, the institutional knowledge got lost, and I had to build yet another educational relationship with the people in a shed at the airport.
When regulations and tariffs got simplified I managed to get a lot more real work done, and our production ran a lot more smoothly.
"The problem here, RSM's national manager Claire Smollett explained, is that the devices can operate in licensed channels. That in turn can cause interference with critical communications systems, in for example aircraft and ambulances."
The operative word being "can", not usually because of default settings or general malicious use but because many of these devices are programmable for access to frequencies used by eg police / emergency services & some idiots /criminals will ruin it for everyone else who would prefer to pay $40 from Ebay instead of the local suppliers $400+.
IIRC there was a loophole a few years ago that permitted people & interest clubs (eg boaties vhf, trampers etc) with registered callsigns to have the cheaper import devices, I knew a few people who had these radios then however I'm told that's no longer legal.
Nope, not true at all. Plenty of devices on default settings for other regions broadcast in bands that are not available for general use in NZ.
https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=73&topicid=223277
I normally buy my Wifi security cameras from the manufacturers online store on Aliexpress. The exact same cameras are sold in NZ by some retailers but for significantly more. But they recently stopped allowing NZers to buy them on ALiexpress. I wonder if that is related. As they are exactly the same, I suspect they have made an error. A pity the products and brands aren't disclosed.
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