Mobile and internet outages widespread as cellphone towers battered by Cyclone Gabrielle

Monday, 13 February 2023

Officials say the need for a national state of emergency is being assessed while five regions have sounded the alarm over Cyclone Gabrielle.

The country’s main telecommunication companies are battling network outages caused by Cyclone Gabrielle, causing an industry-wide emergency response to be activated.

Vodafone NZ had begun dealing with outages of its phone and broadband services since Sunday.

By Monday customers in the Far North, Auckland, Franklin, Kaipara, Rodney and Whangarei districts were experiencing the loss of phone and internet connection.

In a Tweet, chief executive Jason Paris said 29 mobile sites have had power outages in Northland and 12 in Auckland.

* What advice can people expect from officials as Cyclone Gabrielle approaches?

* Cyclone Dovi: Power cuts in Northland, Auckland, Wellington - could last all day

“We have generators on hand and being deployed. Most are in remote rural (areas), so access is tough. Online team & (sic) call centres are here to help in any way at any time,” he said.

But those without service are unable to call the call centres and customers in social media were calling for free data as compensation for having no service during a state of emergency.

Vodafone has been approached for comment.

Spark customers in Karangahake Hauraki District were experiencing an internet outage, while there were mobile phone outages in 30 locations in the Far North, as well as in Auckland, the Coromandel, Tauranga and Waikato.

The Chorus outages as of 12.17pm on Monday.

Chorus was also dealing with a number of outages across the upper North Island.

Telecommunications Forum chief executive Paul Brislen said it had activated its industry-wide Telecommunications Emergency Forum which it used to coordinate the response to events like this.

It was working closely with National Emergency Management Agency (Civil Defence) at a national level and the regional civil defence organisations to support the communities on the ground.

“So far the three mobile network operators are reporting no damage from the cyclone, but plenty of sites that have lost mains power.”

In the area north of Auckland there was about 100 to 120 sites that were operating on battery back-ups, or on generators, although that number fluctuated quickly as the electricity companies work to restore power, he said.

“Where sites are offline completely the network teams are ensuring there is overlap with other cell sites to ensure coverage remains. Customers will notice either a slowdown in network speeds or more customers using a particular site, but they should still be able to make calls and send, receive text messages.”

As the storm moves south so do the power outages, so the forum was working closely with Civil Defence and electricity companies to prioritise telco network assets.

“Obviously, health and safety is a big concern and in the next few hours restoration teams will need to get out to cell sites to connect them to generators or refuel them and so forth. Ensuring those staff are able to do so safely is critically important,” Brislen said.