Telecom has had an embarrassing 48 hours.
It's been dealing with broadband outages and thousands of angry customers, and the company says it will compensate those affected.
The company’s problems started inside an Auckland building early yesterday morning. It says one of its servers stopped recognising its customers' modems, with the result that 300,000 people – or two-thirds of Telecom's customer base – were cut off for eight hours.
“We're as frustrated as our customers because we deeply regret it when something goes wrong, particularly at this time of year when families are at home and want to use broadband,” says Telecom retail chief executive Chris Quin.
But attempts to fix the issue failed; service went off again in the evening and then again this morning.
Adrian Tangaroa Wagner's internet went down during an online business call.
“This morning I went to reconnect and it still wasn't on,” he says. “I went to call them, the provider Telecom, and the phone was engaged so I couldn't do anything. Luckily, half-an-hour later it came back on. But it's not good enough really.”
Telecom says it'll compensate affected businesses, and one company considering that offer is petrol company Z. Its EFTPOS terminals failed for a second time in as many days this morning.
A spokesman for the company told 3 News most of its 210 retail service stations around the country were affected during the network failures.
“From a user point-of-view, and from the investment that we've made in technology, we shouldn't even consider that these failures are anywhere near acceptable,” says Auckland Chamber of Commerce chief executive Michael Barnett.
Telecom says the problem is now fixed but it's reviewing its technology to ensure the service is more robust, especially over the busy Christmas trading period.
3 News
source: newshub archive
