Two-hour phone glitch has Telecom mystified

Telecom admits it is at a loss to explain a two-hour outage yesterday that had the potential to cost retailers millions of dollars.

A disruption from 10.45am to 12.40pm forced retailers north of the Bombay Hills to pull out their zip-zap machines and disrupted calls to and from Telecom lines.

Telecom spokesman Mark Watts told the Herald he did not know what caused the problem, but he apologised to customers and said technicians were working hard to find the cause.

Telecom had "hundreds of thousands" of customers in Auckland and Northland but it would be impossible to say how many of those were affected.

He said the problem had been intermittent, with some calls getting through without problem.

"It affected some people using some services some of the time," he said.

The problem mostly affected landline services, some eftpos and some landline calling to mobiles.

Telecom would not look at offering affected customers compensation unless they contacted the company with concerns, Mr Watts said.

"In the context of this outage, which was intermittent and was fully restored inside two hours, generally we wouldn't offer compensation."

Cameron Brewer, general manager of the Newmarket Business Association, said the outage was the last thing retailers needed.

"Here we are in the sixth quarter of a recession and on one of the coldest days of years and retailers were forced to pull out their zip-zap machines.

"It's not good enough when you consider the fees businesses pay internet providers. It's hard enough in retail land as it is without missing out on sales. Eftpos is the modern day lifeblood of retail," Mr Brewer said.

"Retailers will be looking forward to a full explanation and assurances that it won't be happening again."

But Felicity Berry, assistant manager of Sylvia Park, said the outage caused "minimum disruption" there.

Deb McGhie, a spokeswoman for Westfield shopping centres, said the impact of the outage was not known as some retailers were Telstra customers, and not all the Telecom customers reported a disruption to their business.

Russell Sinclair, northern region manager of the Retail Association, said it was always an inconvenience to members when an outage occurred, and yesterday was unusual as it occurred outside peak times.

Mr Sinclair said the association would usually be contacted by retailers when there was an outage but he had not fielded any calls yesterday.

Although it would always be a hassle, he said, more retailers were now able to continue business when an outage occurred if they had the back-up of a wireless network they could switch to. Others reverted to dragging out the old-fashioned "zip-zap".

Eftpos New Zealand, an ANZ National Bank subsidiary and one of the country's two major electronic card processors, said it had advised its merchant customers to use manual vouchers until the issue was resolved.