Telecom adsl, and I presume vdsl(?), was just out for a few hours in my part of Christchurch (New Brighton). Somewhere in amongst the phone calls, when we managed to talk to someone in New Zealand, we were told the net was down for about 18 thousand customers.
I'd be curious to know more if anyone knows anything.
Pretty annoying when we went without phone or internet for ~18 hours (til ~9:30am) because some scrit worker 'had a cable strike' (his words), but that's a seperate issue.