Telco giants Vodafone, Spark and 2Degrees are working to restore coverage to certain parts of Auckland, which have been struck down by a power outage over the weekend.
As the outage enters its second day, Spark spokesperson Richard Llewellyn says the company has deployed crews out “around the clock” since the power outage began, deploying generators and implementing a programme of battery replacement and refuelling on affected cell-sites.
“Priority was given to cell-sites with high-volumes of traffic and on main arterial routes,” he adds. “While most affected cell sites are back up and running there are still around 17 cell-sites without power this morning - these will be the main focus today.
“Business and residential customers in the areas affected will also likely have service interruptions on broadband and PSTN services until power can be restored.”
In terms of advice for customers as power is restored, Spark says broadband customers should give their internet service a few minutes once power is back on.
“If you don’t have any joy once the five minutes are up, try switching your router off and wait one minute before flicking it back on again,” Llewellyn adds. “You should be good to go but if you’re having trouble, give us a call on 0800 800 123, or *123 from your mobile.”
2Degrees on the other hand have reduced the number of cell-site outages from 50 to 15, according to spokesperson Lucy Reed.
“There a few remaining sites down along the eastern bays and Remuera areas, which we have additional crew arriving from Wellington and Christchurch to support,” she says.
“Our network will be fully resorted when power returns to these areas but until then we’ll be using generators to support as many sites as possible in these areas.”
The Vodafone network however now has only 19 cell-sites within the affected area that have no power, lines which require power to provide mobile coverage.
“We have managed to resume almost full mobile coverage until power is restored,” adds Michelle Baguley, spokesperson, Vodafone. “The Vodafone fixed line network has not been affected.”