After arriving to New Zealand, or another country, the first thing that you will need is a data connexion for your phone. Yes, you can survive without it the first days, but the fists days are the harder as well. So, I recommend you get a new SIM with internet as soon as you can. With internet you can use Google Maps (I know this app has offline maps but it’s not the same), check the bus, call to someone or chat by WhatsApp/Line, etc.
There are three main mobile providers in NZ: 2degrees, Vodafone and Spark. I chose the last one for me.
I got my Spark SIM thanks to someone from the company which helped me with all formalities to arrive to this country. After paying I could use it immediately. How I didn’t know how much internet I was going to need, I decided to pay the pack of “$29 Rollover Value Pack” that includes 2GB of data, 2GB of social media data, unlimited SMS, 300 minutes of calls, and 1GB/day of WiFi from their WiFi access points (phone booths). All of these are $29 / 16.6€ per month.
I paid this only the first month, after that I got down the pack to “$20 Data Lovers Rollover Pack” with 1.5GB of data, 1GB of social media data, and 1GB/day of WiFi. (no SMS or calls)
Finally, in the second half of my year, I got down again to “$19 Rollover Value Pack” with 1.25GB of data, unlimited SMS, 200 minutes of calls because I needed to send SMS and call to my apartment owner.
I was adjusting the pack because I noticed I didn’t need a lot of internet. This is because this company has something that I have never seen in other companies.
Other companies can keep the internet that you don’t use for one month, maybe for three months (I think a year ago Simyo, my Spanish mobile provider, didn’t keep your internet data, now they keep for three months). However, Spark keeps the internet for 12 months! And they don’t do it only with your internet, no, they do it with data, SMS and calls, so you can keeps it for a year and use it when you want/need.
About the quality of the connection, I can’t say anything bad, I have been able to use internet around all north island without any problem.
Also for 4 months, I lived in an apartment without any kind of connection (ADSL/fiber), so we needed to contract internet by 4G. It was 120GB per month. But now they offer 5G and it can be with unlimited data (they have some conditions for that).
