No compensation for broadband outage

Photo / File photo

Telecom has ruled out compensation for the thousands of customers across the country who went without broadband for several hours this morning.

About half the company's 450,000 broadband customers were initially thought to have lost their connections when an issue arose during planned maintenance on a server this morning.

Telecom later said only about 25,000 mainly residential customers had lost service.

Spokeswoman Jo Jalfon said the outage was caused by a fibreoptic cable failure after system upgrade work started about 6am.

"Almost immediately we noticed there was an issue with the broadband. It took three hours to restore, but during that time customers were affected across the country.''

Ms Jalfon said technicians managed to identify the problem quickly and broadband connections were restored about 9.10am.

Telecom has apologised for the inconvenience - but it has ruled out compensation for customers who lost productivity due to the outage.

"The broadband and the mobile network, there's no guarantees around that service - that's in the terms and conditions that people sign up to at the front.

"In this instance it was resolved relatively quickly, and the fact [is] that it happened relatively early in the morning, when not many people would have been using their internet.''

Ms Jalfon said if customers did have concerns they could get in touch to discuss the situation on an individual basis.