A network failure this week left Vodafone New Zealand customers on both the north and south islands without voice, text and data services for several hours, impacting those trying to use 2G, 3G and LTE networks. Service was ultimately restored but the carrier has yet to report the reason for the failure or the number of customers affected.
Radio New Zealand reported that the country’s Telecommunications Users Association speculated that an update could have caused the issue.
“We’ve seen that happen in networks before when they’ve done a software upgrade,” said the association’s CEO Craig Young.
The outage hit South Island users around 6:30 a.m. and, around 9:30 a.m., spread to the North Island.
In a statement, Vodafone said: “We sincerely apologize to our customers for any inconvenience caused. We will continue to monitor services closely throughout the day.”
Vodafone began offering service in New Zealand in 1998 with 138,000 customers, and has grown to cover 2.3 million customers today. The carrier pushes 256,000 voice calls each hour, 21 million text messages each day and more than 200,000 Gb of data each hour. The network has more than 1,300 cell stations; Vodafone New Zealand employees some 3,000 people.
There are more mobile connections in New Zealand than there are people.
