Spark's outage caused outrage throughout New Zealand, company has solution for next time

The Spark Head Office on Victoria Street. Photo / Getty

Spark is looking into providing customers a free landline re-route when things go wrong with its mobile network.

A countrywide network outage yesterday rendered many mobile phones useless.

Spark's staff are investigating why a bypass system didn't kick in after a hardware fault on one of its exchanges.

While the error was corrected in the afternoon, intermittent disruptions affecting text, call and data services continued into the evening.

CEO Home, Mobile and Business Jason Paris says the event was a one-off that caught them off guard.

The company will be looking into whether a blanket reroute would be possible, and if so, where could it be applied, he said.

Yesterday's outages were reported from as far south as Dunedin and north to Auckland, with complaints flooding the company's Facebook page from 9am.

Update at 7:33pm: All mobile services including data should now be back to normal. Please try restarting your phone if...

Posted by Spark on Saturday, January 28, 2017

More than 260 of Spark's 1500 mobile sites across the country were impacted, a spokesman said yesterday, apologising to customers.