Telecom discusses compensation for XT outages

Cartooon / Rod Emmerson

Thousands of Telecom's XT mobile customers remain without services today as technicians work to fix the network.

The problem had affected about 4 per cent of the network south of Taupo, Telecom chief executive Paul Reynolds said.

Tens of thousands of mobile customers south of Taupo have lost their connections for varying lengths of time over the past two days, after the network crashed about 11am Wednesday.

"We've improved overnight. It's now about 3 per cent and it's fundamentally about Dunedin and the south," he told Radio New Zealand this morning.

"We've been working through the night over the past while, in fact progressively narrowing down the boxes in the network that are affected and rerouting things around them, bringing our customers back into service."

It was a problem with the hardware causing the faults, which technicians had to work around by rerouting customers, then removing the boxes to fix it, he said.

Meanwhile Vodafone spokesman Paul Brislen said the numbers of people looking to switch to his employer's network has increased.

Mr Brislen said he would not say how many because the company does not release customer numbers for competition reasons.

He said numbers of people making enquiries about commercial contracts in the South Island had been particularly high.

Telecom spokesman Mark Watts said he did not know of customers leaving Telecom.

"Our focus is on talking with our customers and getting them restored. I have no idea of the voracity of their claims," Mr Watts said.

Regarding possible compensation, Mr Watts said a meeting was taking place this afternoon and no decision had yet been made.

Telecom to review XT network

Telecom has promised no stone will be left unturned in an independent review of its failing XT network, and a watchdog warns a lot will hinge on how open the company is with the findings.

It is the second major fault in two months to strike a network marketed as world-class, and Telecom admits it is unacceptable. Internet forums are already full of people threatening to switch providers.

"This independent reviewer will look at stuff from top to bottom, and we'll go from there," said Telecom spokesman Mark Watts. "Hopefully it will contribute to a situation whereby our customers get what they deserve ... which is a world-class network."

Ernie Newman, head of the Telecommunications Users' Association, said Telecom had to ensure the problems were fixed properly.

"Because there is no way it can possibly contemplate having a third outage on this scale, or I suspect there would then be a huge collapse in confidence."

The network review had to be transparent, Mr Newman said.

"If it wants its customers, and particularly its big business customers, to continue to have confidence in it, it needs to expose that [review] in some detail. The more information you give, the more convinced people are that you actually know what you are doing and you're fixing it ... That's what people need to know here."

Mr Newman said there would be some "crumbling at the margins" of Telecom's customer base, rather than a "wholesale walk-away".

Other providers are poised to benefit as disgruntled Telecom customers look for alternatives.

"These things are always an opportunity," said Vodafone spokesman Paul Brislen. "Certainly we are seeing customers express an interest."

Mr Watts said no guarantees could be given that network problems will not recur. "Any network of any complexity, it can and sometimes does have failures. Whether it's airline ticketing systems, or Eftpos systems, that happens."