The devastating weather of the past few days, with the mass power outages, localised flooding, landslips, and road closures caused by the severe wind and rain from Cyclone Gabrielle, has severely impacted New Zealand telecommunications networks.
Adding to the impacts of the previous weather event in late January.
What we know:
Going into the event, fault volumes and install timeframes were already inflated across the Upper North Island, Local Fibre Companies (LFCs) are expected to see a further increase with the current weather.
We have been advised there are suspected fibre cuts between Waihi and Whangamata, North of Gisborne, Napier to Hastings, Napier to Wairoa and North Taupo as well as
hundreds of Chorus street cabinets out of service.
This is causing outages and higher latency on some links. Where information has not proactively been provided to us, our NOC has requests in with upstream providers.
Carriers are waiting for conditions and travel restrictions to be safe for technicians to investigate the cause of these faults, which will be a combination of damaged fibre, components, and power outages.
It may take some time for services to resume as normal.
Where to get updates:
Connections
For Lightwire Business customers, you can see individually impacted fibre, copper and wireless services in illume on your Pulse NOC Dashboards. Technical contacts will receive the usual Pulse alerts should a connection go offline.
Lightwire Rural: https://status.lightwirebusiness.com/
Chorus: https://www.chorus.co.nz/outages
Tuatahi First Fibre: https://www.tuatahifibre.co.nz/network-status
North Power: https://northpower.com/fibre/faults-and-outages
Power
Power underpins a large proportion of New Zealand’s fibre network. You can find updates here from the power companies:
North Power: https://northpower.com/electricity/current-outages
Counties Power: https://app.countiespower.com/
Waipa Networks: https://waipanetworks.co.nz/outages/
PowerCo: https://outages.powerco.co.nz/
Horizon Energy: https://outages.horizonnetworks.nz/outages
Unison: https://www.unison.co.nz/outages
The Lines Company: https://ifstlc.tvd.co.nz/
Provisioning and fault restoration impact going forward:
LFCs have advised they are unable to provision in many areas of the North Island due to severe weather, power outages and road closures.
They are moving provisioning/install technicians into restoration activities and this will continue to push out installation timelines across Northland, Auckland, Coromandel and the East Coast.
If you have an inflight order, your installation may be delayed. Our provisioning team will provide updates on your orders as we receive them from the LFCs.
All medical, civil emergencies and business-critical requests will continue to receive priority. Please ensure you advise if you fit into any of these categories when lodging support requests and faults.
Lightwire’s NOC and Customer Care teams remain committed to providing customers with as much assistance and information as possible.
Support@lightwirebusiness.com and 0800 534 657
