They’re not different to the consumer. Either way they’re a surcharge to the store price of the item, and most places in the world include it on the sticker.

Honestly, essentials shouldn’t be (majority) privately owned. This includes water, sewage, electricity, most roads, and internet.

To me, as the cables in the US are privately owned it seems that unless you “luck out”, you essentially have 1 realistic option for internet. I’ve been told that it’s fairly regional, so apparently it’s not so bad in the major cities.

In ~99% of NZ the internet (fibre) cables are either crown-company owned (essentially state), or joint owned by private/public. This essentially makes EVERY ISP buy their bandwidth off the cable owner. There is no ISP monopoly (only a physical cable monopoly), and just like power companies, changing ISP’s is trivial. I think a lot of europe does something similar too, and apparently some cities in the US do this too.

AFAIK NZ has no more 24 hour supermakets. I remember brisbane used to, but a quick google search shows that might not be true anymore?

When I was staying in South Bank, restaurants were regularly open until 9:30/10pm. Finding places like that in christchurch is much harder, outside of thursday/friday/saturday. Auckland might be better, but it’s been a while since I’ve stayed there.

TBH, maybe it’s not that brisbane is good for late night stuff, maybe it’s just that NZ is even worse.

I found the same thing when I visited brisbane recently. I’m from NZ, and virtually everything is closed at 6 or 9, depending on the day & what kind of establishment it is.

In NZ, the only time I’ve boiled water is when we had an earthquake that screwed up a bunch of stuff, including the water & sewage pipes.