Internet and phone lines down in Central Hawke's Bay after roadworks mistake

Roading contractors near Waipukurau have cut internet and phone lines to a significant number of people. Photo / Google Maps

About 800 homes or businesses in Central Hawke's Bay were without phone or internet for much of Thursday after a mistake by roading contractors near Waipukurau.

Chorus spokesman Nathan Beaumont said contractors doing roadworks about 1.3km from the town had damaged its network on Wednesday.

"There are technicians on site at the moment working to repair the damage but at this stage I don't have an estimated time when the work will be done.

Beaumont said it was "very frustrating" that it had happened through "no fault of our own".

"I apologise to anyone impacted by this issue."

Manager of BP Waipawa Bronny Harper said the outage occurred just before 5pm on Wednesday.

"I had left for the day and was called back in because the Eftpos wasn't working.

"We initially thought it was a fault with our internet so we worked on that, until we checked with neighbouring businesses and found they were down as well.

"We switched to doing manual fuel sales, but it was the end of the month and Smartfuel customers were trying to redeem their points before they lost them ... we had some very grumpy customers but we found solutions where we could.

"Some people were very understanding once they realised it was beyond our control.

"We brought out the old 'zip zap' credit card machines, some people don't even know what those are nowadays.

"But on the whole it's just general inconvenience and a lot of paperwork. Our boss organised wireless internet to be installed, so we had most services back by lunchtime Thursday."