Mobile black spots: Meet the Kiwis with worse mobile coverage than the developing world 13 Jan, 2021 04:00 PM 11 minutes to read West Coast Regional Councillor Laura Coll McLaughlin at Denniston next to her total station. She is a surveyor by trade. Photo / Supplied Tom Dillane is a reporter at the New Zealand Heraldtom.dillane@nzme.co.nz@tomdillane1 Teresa Wyndham-Smith remembers with a laugh when it first dawned on her that mobile coverage was better in West Africa than the West Coast of New Zealand. That was five years of signal silence ago. The 57-year-old writer and journalist returned to her home country after a decade in Ghana, and plonked herself down in Te Miko, a settlement on the 1000-plus kms of mobile black spots along New Zealand highways.