Storm cuts power to cellphone towers, makes life hard for retailers in Auckland
Wednesday, 11 April 2018
A severe storm slashing the country has led to ATMs going down, poor cellphone coverage, and slow internet connections.
The weather has also reportedly left some retailers without the means to complete sales, with some eftpos machines out of action.
As at 1pm Wednesday, about 120,000 Auckland homes and businesses were still without power. Authorities are saying it may take several days before full service is restored.
Retail NZ spokesman Greg Harford said power outages were 'particularly problematic' for retailers, leaving some with no option but to close.
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'This is because it's systems won't operate, it can't take payments, and there may be health and safety issues for employees and customers,' Harford said.
'Every hour of closure will have a significant financial cost for the businesses.'
Even if power was on and businesses stayed open, storms like this had a major impact on retail, he said.
'Customers tend to stay home, or at work, and they don't get out and about to the shops.
'Retailers will be hoping that the current spell of bad weather is short-lived and that the rest of Autumn is mild and settled.'
Eftpos spokeswoman Caitlin Wyllie said she was unsure how many eftpos machines were down.
'[But] I can say we haven't seen an increase of calls into the helpdesk.'
Paymark spokesman Paul Brislen said there was no way to tell how many of their machines were out, as Paymark did not monitor machines remotely.
'They're all run by the store owners so we don't have visibility of that sort of thing I'm afraid. We might see a dip in transaction volumes in the next couple of days that could be attributed to an outage but we won't know for a few days.'
Meanwhile, some Kiwis were experiencing poor cellphone service, and slow broadband connections.
Vodafone head of technology operations Ian Hooker said about 70 sites went out in Auckland last night, and about 63 were still out by 1pm.
Spark also confirmed 50 of its cellphone towers were still down, and a number of others running on battery power. In addition, 2 Degrees had about 12 towers out of action.
Twenty-nine of ANZ's ATMs were down, as were 35 of BNZ's ATMs. Seven BNZ banks were also closed due to the power outage, and would likely remain closed for the rest of the day.
Hooker said the Vodafone network was 'faring well' in the wake of last night's severe storm, though some customers could be experiencing 'degraded cellphone coverage'.
However, customers would be receiving service from surrounding sites, he said.
'In many areas there is overlapping coverage from surrounding cell sites that are operational, which means customers will still have service.'
Ten generators had been distributed by technicians to the Mangere Bridge and Onehunga areas, and more were on their way to other areas, Hooker said.
'The team are hard at work getting all our sites back up and running.'
In a Facebook post, Spark said its network had not sustained any physical damage as a result of the storm; however, 50 of its cellphone towers were offline.
Where possible, generators were being sent to restore power to some cellphone towers on Wednesday, the post said.
'As the majority of the affected cellphone towers are in the greater Auckland area, you may still receive some mobile coverage from other cellphone towers in your area.
'However, you may experience slower than usual mobile data connections as the load increases on the remaining towers.'
Broadband and landline customers in areas which had power outages could also be experiencing some issues, it said.
'We apologise for the inconvenience. Our technicians are monitoring the situation and working with the power companies to restore services as soon as possible.'