Auckland power outage hits telcos

As parts of Auckland wake up to a second day without power, telco giants Vodafone, Spark and 2Degrees continue to restore coverage to affected customers.

As parts of Auckland wake up to a second day without power, telco giants Vodafone, Spark and 2Degrees continue to restore coverage to affected customers.

According to reports yesterday, around 160 cell sites across the region were hit hard by the outage, which was caused by a substation fire on Sunday morning, affecting as many as 85,000 households at its worst point.

While Vodafone struggled to identify how many customers have been affected during the past 24 hours, spokesperson Michelle Baguley says around 90 cell sites on the telco’s mobile network had no power.

"We have some running on generators and some are partially operating," said Baguley, who also advised that the fixed line network was not impacted.

"We're looking to investigate adding more generators later on today from other parts of the North Island, but there will be areas of no mobile coverage inside that zone."

Spark however had around 40 sites impacted across Auckland, with spokesperson Richard Llewellyn also unaware of how many customers had been affected so far.

"We don't know how many are directly affected in terms of home broadband or PSTN services because without power, people can't turn on their modems or routers or electronic phone systems,” he added.

Echoing the comments of Vodafone and Spark, 2Degrees spokesperson Charlene White told press that around 30 cell sites had been impacted, with the NZ Herald reporting those to be within the eastern area of the city.

"We have battery reserves if we lose power to those sites, but given the duration of it, they are starting to run down,” White said.

"Our guys are trying to do the best they can, but obviously there will be patches where coverage is not possible."

More updates to follow…

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