Chorus close to reconnecting all customers after three-day Auckland outage, blamed on vandals

About 330 customers in Onehunga and Māngere were still without broadband as of 1am, Chorus said in an update this morning on a broadband problems thought to be caused by vandals.

The area is now entering day three of an internet outage caused by vandals early on Monday morning.

Chorus now expects all to be reconnected by midday.

The vandals allegedly cut cables under Māngere Bridge on the Southwestern Motorway, taking 3000 fibre customers and nine copper connections offline, Chorus said. Police are investigating.

“Repairs have been difficult, due to the restricted space under the bridge and the number of fibres that were damaged and needed to be repaired,” a Chorus spokeswoman said.

Adding insult to injury, a car hit a power pole in Onehunga at 1.30am today, leaving several neighbourhoods without power.

“We have multiple crews working 24/7 on multiple cables at once and can see services being restored as the fibres are connected,” the spokeswoman said.

“Obviously we are really disappointed that the actions of a few have led to inconvenience for so many and apologise to all who have been affected.”

Chorus's outage map at 6am Wednesday morning - the third day offline for some 2300 customers.

Eftpos was down for some shops.

There was no immediate word on any potential compensation for business customers who were hit.

Chorus said people would have to take up the matter with their retail internet service provider.

Sepali Naus, who runs the Māngere Floral Studio, told RNZ 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.

Naus was also reportedly 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 told RNZ.

Ahmed said the outage was causing more problems for an already-struggling town centre.

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.