Chorus has promised Taumarunui residents and businesses they will have their internet back very soon and apologised to residents and businesses hit by the fault.
A fault in the area's fibre cable on Monday left Taumarunui residents without internet for two days. Photo: User: Bgabel at wikivoyage shared / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)
Many of the 4707 residents of the central North Island town have been without web access since early Monday morning after a 30cm slump in the road near Te Kūiti damaged the town's fibre cable which is owned by Chorus.
"Typically we'll see hundreds of customers coming back up online at one time" - Steve Pettigrew
Chorus spokesperson Steve Pettigrew said it was a reasonable sized slip which caused the damage.
"It's an armoured cable, it's buried beneath the road surface, but in this instance it was a sizeable enough slip with concrete and tarmac that caused damage to the fibres within that cable."
He said they also found a second fault in the cable which has been worked on today.
Pettigrew said usually Chorus is able to get to faults faster but in this instance there were some exceptional circumstances which did not allow them to get it sorted out more quickly.
"This has been a tougher repair to do than most and certainly on behalf of Chorus happy to apologise to all those residents and businesses affected."
Pettigrew said the company could have responded faster.
Pettigrew told Checkpoint internet services to residents and businesses should be restored shortly as each of the strands of fibre within the cable is rejoined.
"Each of the fibres that is spliced will serve a certain number of customers and as each of those is spliced up they'll see their services coming back up, so typically we'll see hundreds of customers coming back up online at one time."