No compo after Telecom's latest XT outage

Telecom CEO Paul Reynolds fronted the media in February over continuous failures of its new XT network. Photo / Dean Purcell

Telecom says it "absolutely unreservedly apologises" for an intermittent XT outage in the Auckland area this morning, but there will be no compensation this time and the company is unlikely to figure out the exact numbers affected nor the cause.

More than 120 XT cell sites had problems in the upper North Island this morning, causing spotty coverage between 9am and 11.30am.

Thousands of users north of Taupo experienced problems with calling, text and data services.

Spokeswoman Katherine Murphy said neither the exact technical fault nor the number of customers affected were known, and were unlikely to become known, because the problem was intermittent at individual cell sites and affected roaming mobiles individually.

Four previous major outages in the XT network, which led to $15 million in compensation, had been caused by a fault with a sole radio network controller in Christchurch.

When the controller went down, all users south of Taupo became affected.

Since the last outage in February, back up controllers have been installed in both Christchurch and Auckland.

The problem this time, however, took place at individual cell sites, though they were all linked to one controller in Auckland.

It was not known how individual faults occurred simultaneously at 126 sites, Ms Murphy said. She said 111 calls were monitored during the outage.

"This is not the experience we want our customers to have. We absolutely unreservedly apologise to the customers who were inconvenienced," Ms Murphy said.

"[But] we fixed it quite quickly. It was back up in under three hours, which we think is pretty good."

Previous compensation was because customers south of Taupo had repeated problems, and a "really, really bad experience", Ms Murphy said.

Today's issue was the first time customers north of Taupo had been affected, and it was relatively limited and lasted for only a short period of time, she said.

In addition to $15 million in compensation to customers, Telecom has also donated $250,000 to community projects "in recognition of the particular impacts the XT outage had on the lower South Island".

Its biggest single contribution is $75,000 to fund native tree planting in Dunedin and neighbouring rural communities.

On Sunday, Telecom took a punt with its tattered reputation, using full-page newspaper ads to thank its remaining customers for their loyalty.

The company admitted it has been through a rough time, and said it was "no surprise" to be under heavy scrutiny. It also said it had been humbled.

Nine grinning staff were pictured in the ad, over text which reported progress on the troubled XT network.

But Telecom stopped short of claiming XT's problems had been fixed.