Chorus restores Hawke’s Bay internet after vandalism sparks outages

An internet outage overnight caused by “malicious activity” has affected about 700 internet customers in Hawke’s Bay.

At 2.30pm on Monday, breaks in cables south of Napier were found by Chorus which caused internet outages in Clive, Haumoana, Te Awanga, and Tukituki Valley for both fibre and copper customers.

Services were restored at 10pm Monday for fibre customers, with about 80 remaining copper services restored Tuesday afternoon.

According to a Chorus spokeswoman technicians have been on-site to make repairs and restore service.

However, the spokeswoman also said that these repairs were originally planned to address historical damage but have been moved up because of the “unexpected damage”.

“We suspect malicious activity is involved and are working with the police to investigate this further.”

Chorus is not expecting further major impacts to the areas today, except for potential minor service disruptions because of the nature of the repair work.

“Chorus sincerely apologises to affected customers for the inconvenience caused by the outage.”

Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and spent the last 15 years working in radio and media in Auckland, London, Berlin, and Napier. He reports on all stories relevant to residents of the region, along with pieces on art, music, and culture.