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XT outages continue, no decision on compo

Thousands of XT customers south of Dunedin still without access.

By James Heffield / Thursday, January 28 2010

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Thousands of Telecom XT customers south of Dunedin are still without access to the network due to an outage that began yesterday when a hardware component failed.

Telecom spokesperson Mark Watts said the Christchurch-based component failed yesterday morning, disabling network access for all XT customers from Taupo south. The outage prevented affected customers from accessing mobile broadband and sending or receiving phone calls and text messages

Most of the network had been restored by late yesterday afternoon, but there were still “40 or so” cell sites south of Dunedin that had not been restored, he said.

“Our focus right now is on restoring the rest of the network just as soon as we can because it’s not good enough for our customers. Yesterday would have been good.”

Upgrade work has already been carried out on the network following a major outage last month, which Watts said was caused by a “software fault” at the same Christchurch XT facility.

Telecom CEO Paul Reynolds said he had apologised to customers for the delay and had ordered an independent review of the XT network.

“I apologise to our customers who have been inconvenienced, but also recognise that words are not enough. That’s why we are taking rapid action and I am determined to be up front and open with our loyal XT customers on this.

“XT is built as a world-class network but clearly it should not have had these problems. With our technology and operations partner Alcatel-Lucent, we have already been working on capacity and design improvements to protect customers.”

Telecom would look “sympathetically” at compensation for all affected customers, he said.

Vodafone spokesperson Paul Brislen refused to comment on Telecom’s predicament, or why Vodafone’s 3G network had been more stable than Telecoms recently.

If Vodafone’s 3G network went down customers would be compensated on a “case by case” basis, he said.