Hundreds of South Islanders trying to use internet services have been getting fault messages, after two main cables supplying Southland and parts of Dunedin were severed on Wednesday. Photo: Screenshot/Google Chrome
Mobile service is back for Otago and Southland after hungry rodents and a contractor brought down many internet and phone services for the lower South Island, after the two main fibre cables supplying the area were severed on the same day.
One New Zealand has confirmed rodents chewed through a fibre cable near Dunedin, while the area's second main cable - a back up - was accidentally cut by a contractor, between Gore and Balclutha.
One New Zealand said engineers fixed one path of the fibre network near Dunedin about 4pm but they remained on site to fix a second cable on Wednesday evening.
"We are hearing from our customers that service has begun to restore," a spokesperson said.
"We can confirm that all of our impacted mobile sites are now fully restored - customers can call, text and get online as usual.
"We'd like to reiterate our apology for this issue today, and remind customers that in a scenario like this, they can make an emergency 111 call using any available network."
Hundreds of people reported internet or phone outages across Southland and Otago on Wednesday.
The website Downdetector found spikes in reports for internet outages across One New Zealand, Spark, 2degrees and Slingshot, shortly after 10am.
The University of Otago earlier said internet and mobile service were limited at all its campuses, including in Dunedin, Wellington, Invercargill and Auckland, and they did not know when full services would be restored.
One New Zealand said earlier said the issues affecting the two cables were unrelated and isolated.
"We're sorry for the inconvenience caused by this issue, our engineers are on site working to fix it and we hope to have service restored by this afternoon," a spokesperson said.
Some services were still working during the outage, the company said: "Eligible mobile customers will still be able to text using our satellite TXT service."
Spark confirmed that only a small number of customers might be affected, if they were using Rural Connectivity Group towers, which were shared by all providers.
2degrees said all of its internet and mobile traffic had been moved to a different cable so its customers would experience minimal impacts.
Earlier on Tuesday afternoon, KiwiRail said work was underway in the Sawyers Bay Tunnel on the issue.
Train services have not been affected by the outages.
Fire and Emergency said it was relying on back-up systems for its Southern Communications Centre due to the outages.
A spokesperson said the centre had been affected, but was relying on back-up systems to continue as normal.
They did not provide any further details.
Police and St John said they had not had any problems.
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