By Finn Blackwell of RNZ
Public vandalism is to blame for an internet outage affecting about 3000 customers in the Auckland suburbs of Māngere Bridge and Onehunga, internet provider Chorus says.
The internet went down at 5.30am on Monday morning, and was still out on Tuesday.
Chorus said the cables supplying broadband to the suburbs were damaged and services were expected to be back up and running by Wednesday.
Copper services were also affected.
The situation had escalated since Monday, a Chorus spokesperson said, and its team was working around the clock to resolve the issue.
An Auckland councillor said the widespread outage showed how reliant communities could be on technology.
Manukau ward councillor Lotu Fuli said she hoped the community would be back online soon.
“It just shows, I guess, how reliant we have become as a society on these things and on technology, and when it does go wrong, the disruption that it causes to our lives,” she said.
“I really do hope that it’s sorted out as soon as possible so that our families can get back online and get back to work, but especially for our more vulnerable families, our seniors who rely on that for their doctor’s appointments for example, our hospitals, our clinics and places like that who may be relying on it for really important equipment.”
Businesses in the neighbourhood are struggling with the ongoing outage.
Sepali Naus, who runs the Māngere Floral Studio, said she had come up with work-arounds to run her shop during the internet outage.
“We’re using our data on our cellphones to hotspot our computer, so we can get internet via our data,” she said.
She was worried the data would run out, leaving her shop in the dark.
“We rely on it for our orders coming in through the website, and our phone is connected to our Chorus line ... Our eftpos machine is down.”
Naus was also asking customers to use bank transfers when shopping to get around the outage.
Rasheed Ahmed, from Hammer Hardware, said they were also dealing with difficult conditions.
“People don’t carry cash,” he said.
Ahmed said the outage was causing more problems for an already-struggling town centre.
“I feel sorry for our village here, with the business people who are already struggling to have customers here,” he said.
“Now, with this happening, I think we are going backwards.
“Technology, we think it’s going to be better, but I think we’re going backwards.”
“All of this is a positive step forward, but now we need the next one."
