'Broken fibre' blamed for Vodafone outage across lower North Island

Promises problem will be fixed within an hour.

NBR staff
Fri, 20 May 2011

UPDATE 4.30pm: Vodafone says service has been restored. The outage was "picked up" at 1pm, the company said.

UPDATE 3pm: Vodafone told NBR that restoration of service was around 15 minutes away. The fibre cut took place on a railway line.

Vodafone sayd its mobile customers are suffering degraded or lost service in a number of lower North Island towns:

The affected areas are:

The company put the problem down to "broken fibre."

At 1.37pm, Vodafone spokesman Matt East told NBR the problem should be fixed within an hour.

Mr East was unaware how the fibre was broken, or the location.

Mobile phone companies use a mixture of microwave and fibre optic cable links to connect their celltowers to their main networks.

The outage caps a bad month for phone companies, with 2degrees and Telecom also suffering network outages (see links top right).

NBR staff
Fri, 20 May 2011