Telecom outage blamed on software error

Some eftpos links were affected by an intermittent Telecom outage yesterday. Photo / Dean Purcell

A software glitch at the Papatoetoe exchange has been blamed for outages which affected Telecom landlines between south Auckland and Northland yesterday.

"(It's) a key exchange within the network in this part of the world, and it has been rectified. In very plain English terms, it was a software error," Telecom spokesman Mark Watts told NZPA today.

While Telecom's exchanges shared software and equipment, Mr Watts said that particular glitch was not expected to appear in other areas.

He said the outage was not a "blanket blackout" but rather an intermittent problem.

A call might have failed at 11am but been connected at 11.01am.

"If you're one of those (affected) customers, that's really frustrating, and we share that frustration."

The problem began at 10.40am and was repaired within two hours.

- NZPA