Southern users hit by XT outage

Southern users of Telecom's much-vaunted XT mobile network found themselves caught in a communications breakdown that lasted most of the working day yesterday.

XT phones throughout the region sparked back into life soon after 4pm after spending much of day searching for a signal.

A Telecom spokesman said the outage affected about 80,000 customers from Taupo south, with service cut from about 4.30am.

Businesses polled by The Southland Times yesterday reported few problems, with staff finding other ways to communicate, using alternative networks or XT's predecessor the CDMA Telecom system, which was not affected.

However, some said their teenage children thought the outage was apocalyptic.

"My daughter is beside herself ... To think she might have to actually talk to people the old-fashioned way – for her it's terrible – dire even," one woman said.

The telecommunications giant apologised for the outage, which happened after a technical fault affected a Christchurch-based technology component.

The company called in specialists from overseas to help restore the service.

The latest breakdown comes a little more than two weeks after a similar outage cut services across much of the company on November 27.

Southern subscribers were also affected by a three-hour outage on November 20.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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