Slow progress made on Northland telco glitch

Telco glitch in large parts of the Far North district is yet to be resolved. Photo / Peter de Graaf

Whangārei-based independent broadband and phone provider Uber Group uses mostly solar to service its mainly rural 6000 customers who have had little to no disruption to their phone and internet reception.

The company has 200 transmission sites from Ahipara to just south of Wellsford and its customers are a combination of residential and businesses, mainly the former.

“The problems have been mostly power-related. We’ve had two sites that required our technicians to go out on site and straighten the poles to make sure all the signals are good but it’s racing around re-stocking batteries, and charging sites. All our solar sites have been perfectly fine,” co-owner Steve Cochrane said.

He said all sites have battery backup to run for at least a couple of days.

Only between 10 and 15 customers who relied on the grid have no reception, he said, but they would be fine if they have a generator.

Chief operations officer Pauline Rose said a lot of the bigger sites have AC power or Uber Group put them in places where there was normal power because they have larger loads than some of the others.

New Zealand Telecommunications Forum (TCF) chief executive Paul Brislen said Northland was largely back online “albeit with some variation for power supply issues”.

2degrees has four sites offline still, the remaining 61 are operating as they should, Brislen said.

He said at 9.45am on Thursday, Vodafone and the Rural Connectivity Group had a few more sites down - 22 out of 123 for Vodafone and 24 sites for the RCG “but are working with the power company for restoration there”.