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With the awful week Telecom NZ has had, you can bet there is a rather large sigh of relief sweeping through the corporate bosses with the news today that the XT network is now back online and fully functional again across the South Island. It has been stable since approximately 10pm Friday night and they will continue to monitor it for days to come.

While the exact cause of the problem is yet to be made public, it was definitely confined within a certain region of the South Island and did not in any way have an effect on customers in the North Island. So I have been quite surprised to learn that quite a few people here in Auckland are going into Telecom retail stores and trying to blame this particular down time for their phone no longer working. There was an issue with some sim cards earlier in this past week, but that was minor and easily resolved with replacements.

Phones failing because they were accidentally dropped in water is quite common. Dropping a phone in liquid is outside the warranty of every phone, regardless of where you buy it and quite a few insurance policies will also not pay out for such an event either. So its quite amusing to hear that a large group of people have tried to get their phones replaced, blaming the downed network for the issues, when in fact the indicator inside the phone clearly shows its been wet.

A little hint to those people. All cellphones contain a little sticker inside them that changes colour when it gets wet. The wetter it gets, the more vivid the colour change. Anyone working for a retailer that sells any brand of cellphone will know this.

The full press release from Telecom about restoration of XT Network services follows.

XT SERVICES FULLY RESTORED
30 January 2010

Telecom has advised that all XT mobile sites have been restored since 10pm last night.

Mobile sites in the lower South Island, which had been experiencing issues since Wednesday morning, are now operating and stable.

Intensive monitoring of the network will continue and a full and thorough review will be conducted.

Compensation for customers significantly affected by the network issues will be announced early next week.

Telecom apologises again to customers affected by this issue.
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Contact:
Mark Watts
0272 504 018