Northland fibre outage disrupts businesses, leaves thousands offline

Many businesses were forced to close or switch to cash-only transactions. Photo / NZME

The Northland fibre outage that left thousands of businesses and homes without internet for at least 12 hours has been another “disruptive” blow for local businesses.

A digger damaged the main fibre cable between Whangārei and Dargaville on January 8 around 8am.

More than 2070 customers in the Kaipara District were affected, with many businesses forced to close or switch to cash-only transactions.

A Northpower spokesperson said the Spark-owned cable, which supplied broadband to all customers in Dargaville, Ruawai, Paparoa and Maungaturoto, was restored at 8.30pm the same day.

The digger was being operated by a third-party contractor when the damage occurred, she said.

Sue Curtis from the Dargaville Community Development Board, which supports local businesses, said the outage was “disruptive”.

“It was very disappointing to have this happen so soon after the power outage last year.

“It was a whole day for Dargaville businesses to be without internet, eftpos, and access to their databases.

“The banks were closed because they couldn’t access anything.

“It was really disruptive.”

There were huge queues at the town’s supermarket because Eftpos was down and customers without sufficient cash had to fill in credit notes instead.

Curtis said the outage showed cash was still “a valuable commodity in our community”.

“Only people who had cash when it went down could spend any money.

“Supermarket customers were getting to the counter before they found out they couldn’t use their cards.”

Northlanders were affected by a massive outage in June when a Transpower pylon toppled over during maintenance work.

The incident is the second major outage caused by human error in Northland of late.

Last June a Transpower pylon collapsed leaving 88,000 Northlanders without power when contractors doing routine maintenance removed too many nuts from the pylon’s feet.

That widespread outage was estimated to have cost the region around $60 million.

Victoria Superette manager Dharmesh Lal said most eftpos cards weren’t working all day, and customers left his Dargaville shop because they didn’t have cash.

Lal estimates he lost about $3000 in sales.

“Only Mastercard was working, we struggled with cash sales.

“Not everyone has cash - that’s a problem.

“Some customers left the stuff [grocery items] and they went, so we had losses.”

Merissa Goodwin’s Maungaturoto cafe, Mamaz Eatz, was also impacted by the outage.

Goodwin said she “lost a lot of business” both during opening hours and in the evening when she would usually be taking orders.

“I need Wi-Fi for the eftpos machine to work.

“A lot of customers don’t carry cash ... I still had food left yesterday.

“My phone didn’t work either because I’m with Spark, so no one could call me for orders. That’s my main business in the evening.”

A Spark spokesperson said the cable was damaged when it was hit while a culvert was being dug near Tangowahine.

“The affected fibre cables were a mixture of Spark and Chorus cables, leading to broadband outages across multiple providers, not only Spark customers.

“Chorus technicians repaired the final damaged cable at approximately 9.30pm last night, restoring all services.”

Jenny Ling is a senior journalist at the Northern Advocate. She has a special interest in covering human interest stories, along with roading, lifestyle, business, and animal welfare issues.