No compensation for disgruntled Spark users

Spark customers are unlikely to recieve any compensation following a service outage yesterday. Photo / File

It is unlikely disgruntled Spark customers will receive compensation following yesterday's five-hour long service outage.

The network failure impacted data, texts, and phone calls for customers in many parts of the North Island.

The telecommunications giant began to receive reports of service issues about 4pm, and services were returned to normal by 9.30pm, Spark spokeswoman Lucy Fullarton said yesterday.

Today, Fullarton said the problem was traced back to an issue with a key central computer system.

"(This) meant our customers' mobile phones had difficulty 'signing on' to the network to transmit or receive mobile communications."

The high quality equipment that was affected was brand new and managed for Spark by international experts, she said.

"It runs perfectly 99.9 per cent of the time," Fullarton said. "We haven't seen this particular issue before, and neither have our international partners."

Fullarton said technology teams continued to monitor the situation closely, and were working to get software fixes that would prevent a similar issue from occurring again.

Meanwhile, customers had taken to social media, demanding compensation following the outage.

"U (sic) should be compensating us for this bad network some of us had work to do and couldn't, what if there had of been an emergency and we couldn't call the ambulance or fire or police, it's just not good enough to say the least," one customer said on Spark's Facebook page.

Fullarton said as a general rule Spark did not normally provide compensation in these circumstances.

"Like any provider, we can't guarantee 100 per cent service all the time," she said. "This issue was intermittent for some customers and was relatively short-term in nature.

"We know that our customers are becoming more dependent on digital services every day, so when things do go wrong it hits them hard."

Fullarton said this was the first time in over five years that there had been a significant service issue on its mobile network. "We'll keep striving to do better and better, but overall our network runs better today than it ever has," she said.