Spark's mobile network back following widespread outages

UPDATE Feb 12: Spark's mobile network is back up and running following a major glitch left many customers uable to make calls, send txts or use their phones for email or internet.  

Problems hit around 4pm and lasted until close to 10pm. Spark has yet to identify the cause  The telco says the problems were "intermittent but widespread." It was concentrated on the upper North Island, but affected some customers in other centres.

Separately, Spark customers in Wellington were hit by a landline broadband outage yesterday evening.

Spark blamed Chorus, and the network operator says that's a fair cop.

Chorus comms manager Steve Pettigrew says equipment failure was to blame.

"An NRA [network resource allocator] handover link out of Wellington failed requiring a hardware card replacement," he says.

"The work took about three and half hours before full restoration with the outage impacting approximately 10,000 end-users on the link across all ISPs. Some users may have needed to reset their modem/routers to restore service."

Wellington man Owen Williams tells NBR his broadband was out from around 5.30pm last night to about 5am this morning.

The outage was "a shocker" he says.

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UPDATE Feb 11 / 10pm: Spark exec Chris Quin has just tweeted an all-clear following several hours of grief for the company's mobile network.

At 9.50pm he posted, "News is that we are now seeing normal mobile network performance so now team is focused on high care and staying that way!"

Landline broadband problems continue for Wellington customers.

EARLIER: Spark has been hit by mobile and broadband network problems late today, but the issues are apparently unrelated.

"We are experiencing problems across the Spark mobile network, which mean some customers are unable to make calls, send texts or use mobile data. The problems are intermittent, but appear to be widespread," says Spark corporate communications head Richard Llewellyn.

"Our technical teams are investigating the cause of this issue urgently and we will provide an update as soon as possible."

The problems first hit around 4pm.

An official update from Spark says, "Although the network issues are most severe in the upper half of the North Island, customers in other parts of the country may also be affected."

Separately, "Spark broadband customers in the Wellington region have been without broadband services this evening due to the failure of a Chorus network element," the company says.

"The failure of such an element would normally mean services from other broadband providers are also affected, although we are not in a position to confirm this.  This broadband issue is unrelated to the mobile network issue."

Other ISPs did not immediately respond to queries about their service around Wellington.

On Twitter, Wellington man Owen Wiliams posted around 8.30pm, "Our home internet has been down for three hours. Going to revert to caveman soon."

Spark's departing CEO for home, mobile and business Chris Quin has also been on social media, performing his perhaps slightly too familair role of updating customers during a network glitch. 

ckeall@nbr.co.nz

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