Human error during planned works resulted in internet outages. Photo: 123RF
Ultrafast broadband provider Chorus says Friday morning's massive internet outage across the lower North Island was caused by human error.
Connections went down before 11am, affecting connections from Wellington, Kapiti, Hutt Valley, Palmerston North and through to Napier. One internet service provider estimated 90 percent of customers in the regions were affected.
The outage lasted more than an hour, and was fixed by about 12.30pm.
Chorus on Friday afternoon said it was "the result of human error during planned works, which resulted in one of our core ethernet routers for the Wellington region being isolated from our network".
"The error was identified and corrected, and all services restored within a 1.5-hour period," the infrastructure provider said.
"At its peak, approximately 118,000 services were affected by the outage."
Chorus said a "full investigation" had been launched, "which will include a review of our planned works processes, and any changes needed to prevent a similar situation in future".
"Chorus sincerely apologises for any inconvenience caused and thanks those impacted for their patience and understanding."
Gorilla Technology chief executive Paul Spain told RNZ that he understood the equipment that failed was based in a Chorus site on Wellington's Courtenay Place.
Spain said it appeared to have had some sort of technical fault.
"We usually don't have these things having such a widespread impact because there tends to be redundancy built into the system, because if one component fails another part of the network takes up the slack and keeps operating."
He said it was likely Chorus would provide more details in due course.
"We usually see the Chorus network being really resilient and serving New Zealand well, so you know this is a reasonably uncommon occurrence."
Spain told RNZ these types of issues could have a widespread impact.
"I think Chorus will be working hard after this to understand what happened [and] how do they make sure it never happens again."
Earlier, Voyager said it had identified an issue affecting "Chorus Wellington UFB (ultrafast broadband) handover".
"This handover services Wellington, Kapiti, Hutt Valley, Palmerston North and through to Napier."
Just after 12.30pm, Voyager said connections were starting to come back online, but users might need to restart their routers.
"My office is being kept updated on the situation," Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith said earlier, when connections were still offline.
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