Damaged fibre causes Spark broadband outage in Rotorua and Taupo

A Spark broadband outage affecting customers in parts of Rotorua and Taupo is expected to be fixed "in the next couple of hours".

The outage happened about 2.30pm yesterday when contractors doing directional drilling damaged about 20m of fibre between Tauranga and Paeroa.

A Spark spokeswoman said they were working to reroute internet traffic to restore broadband services to all customers.

She said the repair to the cut fibre would be extensive and would take "a few days".

She could not say how many customers had been affected, only that it was "some".

"We are doing everything we can to restore broadband services and apologise to those customers affected by this outage."