Household spending › Communication
Phones and Modems: what NZ households spend per week
Stats NZ publishes this category as Telecommunication equipment, within Communication. It is called Phones and Modems here because that is what it is, but every figure on this page is the official category.
What this category covers
The physical devices that make a connection possible. Mobile phones and smartphones bought outright, landline handsets, modems, routers and mesh units, SIM cards, and accessories bought separately such as chargers, cables, cases and screen protectors. Repairs to a handset, including screen replacement, are recorded here as well.
What it does not cover
The plan and the data are telecommunication services. Computers, tablets and televisions are audio-visual and computing equipment under recreation and culture, even though a tablet does much of what a phone does.
Those boundaries are set by the survey's own classification, not by us. They matter because a figure read against the wrong definition is worse than no figure: it looks precise and it answers a different question. If you are comparing your own spending against this page, check the exclusions above first.
How to read the figure
Handsets are replaced every few years, so about one household in six records a purchase in the survey period. Where a phone is paid off inside a monthly plan, the cost shows up in telecommunication services instead, which pushes this line down over time without anyone buying fewer phones. That is a classification effect rather than a real fall.
Every survey year
The Household Economic Survey runs every three years. This is telecommunication equipment in each survey since 2007, for all New Zealand households.
Read the two money columns together. The published column is the money of each survey year itself, so comparing 2007 with 2023 across it compares two different dollars. The adjusted column restates every year in 2026.06 dollars using the Communication CPI series, which is the column to use for a real change. That adjustment is our arithmetic, not a Stats NZ statistic.
The reporting column is the share of surveyed households that recorded any spending in this category at all: the lower it is, the further the average sits from what a household that does spend here actually pays.
| Survey | Published per week | In 2026.06 dollars | Sampling error | Households reporting | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | $0.00 | $0.00 | — | 0% | — |
| 2010 | $0.00 | $0.00 | — | 0% | — |
| 2013 | $1.50 | $1.28 | ±24% | 6.9% | — |
| 2016 | $3.00 | $2.82 | ±34% | 4.9% | +100% |
| 2019 | $5.00 | $5.35 | ±66% | 2.2% | +67% |
| 2023 | $3.90 | $4.45 | ±13.2% | 15.6% | -22% |
Phones and Modems over time
Each bar is one survey, restated in 2026.06 dollars so the six are comparable. In real terms, spending on telecommunication equipment has moved by 0 per cent since 2007. In the money of the day it went from $0.00 to $3.90 a week, and most of that difference is prices rather than behaviour, which is exactly why the chart is drawn on the adjusted figures.
$0$9.24
Nothing to chart for 2007, 2010, because the survey recorded no spending in this category there at all. That is a measured zero rather than a figure withheld for uncertainty.
The dark line with a cap at each end shows the sampling error Stats NZ publishes with that figure: the survey is confident the true value lies within it. A long line means a less certain number. Bars in a pale fill are survey years whose sampling error is above the level at which this site normally withholds a figure. They are drawn here because the direction of a series is worth seeing even where the level is not reliable enough to quote, and the table above gives the error on each one.
By household size
Household size explains more of the variation in most categories than anything else on this page.
$0$6.20
Not shown, because the survey sample was too small to report reliably: 1 person, 4 people, 5 or more people.
The dark line with a cap at each end shows the sampling error Stats NZ publishes with that figure: the survey is confident the true value lies within it. A long line means a less certain number.
By region
The survey groups the country into five broad regions rather than cities, so Auckland is a region and Hamilton is part of the rest of the North Island.
$0$4.78
Not shown, because the survey sample was too small to report reliably: Wellington, Canterbury, Rest of South Island.
The dark line with a cap at each end shows the sampling error Stats NZ publishes with that figure: the survey is confident the true value lies within it. A long line means a less certain number.
By tenure
Whether a household owns or rents correlates with age, income and household composition, so a difference here is not caused by tenure alone.
$0$6.85
Not shown, because the survey sample was too small to report reliably: Family trust, Trust, mortgaged, Trust, no mortgage.
Nothing to chart for Renting, no rent, because the survey recorded no spending in this category there at all. That is a measured zero rather than a figure withheld for uncertainty.
The dark line with a cap at each end shows the sampling error Stats NZ publishes with that figure: the survey is confident the true value lies within it. A long line means a less certain number.
Breakdowns that cannot be reported
Too few surveyed households recorded spending in this category for these breakdowns to be published at a sampling error under 30 per cent: by household income. They are named here rather than left out, because a missing section reads as an oversight and a suppressed one reads as what it is. The communication page reports the same breakdowns for the wider category, where the sample is large enough.
The rest of communication
These are the other components of the same top-level category. They add up, with this one, to the total on the Communication page.
Related calculators
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page is from the Stats NZ Household Economic Survey, retrieved through the Aotearoa Data Explorer, for survey years 2007 to 2023. Inflation adjustments use the Stats NZ Consumers Price Index to the 2026.06 quarter. Stats NZ data is used with attribution; the survey figures are theirs and the adjustments are ours.
Household Economic Survey figures are averages of weekly household expenditure and carry the sampling errors shown. They are averages rather than medians, so they are pulled upward by the highest spenders. Figures are rounded as published.