Telecom New Zealand Suffers Dual Fiber Cuts

New Zealand suffered a major telecom outage that was blamed on two fiber cuts in Telecom New Zealand’s network. Internet, mobile and landline calls were affected. Bank ATMs were also affected and trading was halted on the New Zealand stock exchange. The outage also affected calls to Telecom New Zealand’s own call centers, causing overloading. In the first incident, there was physical damage to a fiber on a bridge that was apparently caused by a rat chewing through a cable. Services through that fiber were able to be routed through different parts of the network until the second incident occurred when a post-hole digger cut through another fiber. It reportedly took five hours to restore services.
http://www.telecom.co.nz