XT outage blamed on 'unusual problems'

Telecom is monitoring its XT network after 'unusual' problems caused service disruptions last night.

Some users of the troubled network struggled to send SMS messages and had trouble making voice calls.

A statement this morning said the network should be back to normal, but pointed to 'an unusual pattern of SMS traffic' as a possible cause of the mystery issue.

"We are currently investigating, to find the cause of this unusual SMS traffic behaviour," the company said.

"We are continuing to monitor the network very closely and as we have previously told customers we continue to bring new capacity into play as customer demand increases."

Telecom spokesman Mark Watts said interruptions to XT services had occurred in "various spots", mainly in the southern parts of New Zealand.

Issues had overwhelmingly affected texting, he said.

Services had returned to normal at 11pm yesterday and the company was keeping a close watch on the situation, he said

Telecom initially denied network problems yesterday, the company posted on Twitter late last night it was aware of problems and that it had been experiencing "a definite performance degradation".

"Intermittent disruption to txt services since early evening due to unusual high traffic levels. Close monitoring continues," the company wrote.

The XT network has suffered major troubles since its launch last August.
Telecom has announced it will offer $5 million in compensation to customers after the network went down in December and January.

Fonterra has delayed switching many of its staff to the new network because of the problems.

A Hastings reader told nzherald.co.nz yesterday that he had been unable to send or receive text messages since 4pm, and phone calls kept disconnecting.

- NZHERALD STAFF