Malcolm Dick made his fortune through the domestic internet market with CallPlus.
But there is no taking it easy for the telecommunications industry veteran.
For his second act, the entrepreneur is trying his hand at the international bandwidth market.
Along with fellow Rich Lister Sir Eion Edgar and French telco executive Rémi Galasso, Mr Dick is one of three main backers of the Hawaiki Cable, which as the Rich List went to press was due for its commercial launch in August.
The exact mix of investment, debt and anchor contracts bankrolling the privately held Hawaiki has never been made public but NBR understands Mr Dick has put somewhere between $50m and $60m – or about a third of his wealth – into the company.
The Hawaiki Cable will link Australia, New Zealand and the US, and become New Zealand’s third major internet pipe to the outside world behind the 50% Spark-owned Southern Cross Cable (which links the same three countries) and Tasman Global Access (a Spark-Telstra-Vodafone joint venture linking Sydney and Auckland, which went live last year).
While highly profitable Southern Cross can be expected to vigorously defend it patch, the Hawaiki crew is in it for the long haul. Sir Eion told NBR its business plan allows for five years of losses.
Hawaiki will be up against it as it tries to sell bandwidth to New Zealand’s two largest retail ISPs, Spark and Vodafone, both of whom have interests in rival international cables.
However, Hawaiki does have the benefit of a $50m anchor customer contract from Crown-owned company Reannz, which operates a broadband network for universities and Crown research Institutes. The previous government awarded the contract with the purpose of promoting international cable competition (only new market entrants were eligible).
Mr Dick also points out even Spark and Vodafone need redundant systems; that booming demand for broadband means plenty of business to go around; and that New Zealand business was only ever going to be a fraction of Hawaiki’s revenue – the cable operator sees most of its revenue coming from Australia-US and US-Australia bandwidth contracts.
If Hawaiki wasn’t enough, Mr Dick is also keeping himself busy with Blue Reach, a startup he hopes will turn into a wireless broadband network; effectively New Zealand’s fourth major mobile network operator after Spark, Vodafone and 2degrees.
However, April and May this year saw Blue Reach bogged down in a legal quagmire as Mr Dick went to the High Court in a bid to resolve a spectrum stoush with Spark, only to have his case thrown out.
Like Hawaiki, Blue Reach is a long-term play. It’s unlikely to launch until after 2020. The Ministry of Business is unlikely to allocate 5G spectrum for commercial use before that date.
Along with former wife and business partner Annette Presley, Dick co-founded the CallPlus Group in 1996, which grew to become the country’s third-largest telco before it was sold to Australian telco M2 (subsequently merged into Vocus Group) in 2015 for $250 million.
His home base is a lifestyle block in Coatesville and he also owns property in Remuera, Paihia and Kerikeri.