Fibre optic cable cut to South Island's largest school.

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › Fibre optic cable cut to South Island's largest school.

1 | 2

Lias

5655 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 3978

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#3463780 23-Feb-2026 16:12

ascroft:

Now there is another outage in AKL… 6000 homes affected.

RNZ have a picture of transmission lines with the story - rather amused by that….. :-)

Wonder if this will be another contractor not doing due diligence before commencing work.

M.

From what I heard anecdotally, it sounds like copper thieves went after a bundle of cables under a bridge, cutting both copper and fibre runs.

I'm a geek, a gamer, a dad, a Quic user, and an IT Professional. I have a full rack home lab, size 15 feet, an epic beard and Asperger's. I'm a bit of a Cypherpunk, who believes information wants to be free and the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. If you use my Quic signup you can also use the code R570394EKGIZ8 for free setup. Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

gokiwi64

36 posts

Geek
+1 received by user: 9

#3463828 23-Feb-2026 19:27

We are 90%+ relient on the internet for teaching and all ancillary services. We are dual fed but from the same provider only when we leave the campus proper we pick up alternate providers , we also relay heavily on UISP radio links - these are single ended.

But then we have a data center in Auckland but campus is in Christchurch (ish) , maybe Uni's operate at more resilent level than high schools ?.

boosacnoodle

1269 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 855

#3463845 23-Feb-2026 20:45

25,000 students versus just over a thousand. Yeah, they're a bit different...

nitro

757 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 335

#3463867 24-Feb-2026 07:44

ascroft:

Define ‘genuine human error’ - is not conducting due diligence before commencing work an error? Not in my world………

My guess (unproven) would be 80% of issues is due to not performing due diligence, 20% human error after due diligence was performed.

i'd argue that not engineering for redundancy is not conducting due diligence. you can spin it however you want. prosecuting after the fact still means you were disconnected for some period of time. you will not be protected from this happening.

which one would be easier? lobbying for a law change, or providing an alternate path/s? would you rather wait months or years for a law change that will minimise your risk (does not eliminate), or put a backup connection/s in place?

Quinny

926 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 208

Trusted

#3463894 24-Feb-2026 10:05

Missed this. Media turned into click bait. The school had to close because the fire alarms were also affected by the internet loss. It was the bottom line in a big article. Really enforces my dislike of NZ media reporting these days.

MadEngineer

4591 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 2570

Trusted

#3465563 27-Feb-2026 21:22

Regardless of the reason for closure, a school or business should not have to close just because fibre got cut.

If it’s that critical then you have redundancy and that’s not expensive at all.

You're not on Atlantis anymore, Duncan Idaho.

Mighty Ape

Shop now at Mighty Ape (affiliate link).

raytaylor

4076 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1296

Trusted

#3465766 1-Mar-2026 10:19

Quinny:

Missed this. Media turned into click bait. The school had to close because the fire alarms were also affected by the internet loss. It was the bottom line in a big article. Really enforces my dislike of NZ media reporting these days.

I look at it and think if the fire alarm cant call the monitoring centre, then a teacher can.
Simply tell the teachers "today if the alarm sounds, someone needs to head to the monitoring panel to see where the alarm tripped then call both 111 and the alarm monitoring centre"

In fact that should be the normal process - even if they would normally get a "we already know" response from the monitoring centre and fire dispatch.

Ray Taylor

There is no place like localhost

Spreadsheet for Comparing Electricity Plans Here

PolicyGuy

1820 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1769

ID Verified

Lifetime subscriber

#3465786 1-Mar-2026 12:54

raytaylor:

I look at it and think if the fire alarm cant call the monitoring centre, then a teacher can.
Simply tell the teachers "today if the alarm sounds, someone needs to head to the monitoring panel to see where the alarm tripped then call both 111 and the alarm monitoring centre"

In fact that should be the normal process - even if they would normally get a "we already know" response from the monitoring centre and fire dispatch.

Sorry, they can't legally do that as a standard procedure.

A building over a certain occupancy limit (somewhat arbitrarily set and calculated**) must have an automatic brigade-linked fire alarm system in order to get its building WOF. To knowingly occupy such a building (particularly with vulnerable people like children) without a working brigade-linked automatic fire alarm would be an offence, and would be an extreme aggravating factor if someone was hurt in a fire.

The Person Conducting the Business or Undertaking (PCBU) - probably the Principal - would be opening themselves to a world of hurt, including criminal charges, under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 if they allowed the school to stay open without a working brigade-linked automatic fire alarm. They would indubitably be found to have failed to take all reasonable measures to mitigate risks of injury

Of course the school should have had an alternative redundant path for the fire alarm system to connect to FENZ, but they didn't, so they had to shut.

** At a school where I was on the BoT, we were required to have an automatic fire alarm in one building complex, because the calculated maximum occupancy was over the limit. We tried to point out that to reach the limit, the hall and all the attached classrooms would have had to be standing-room-only packed, and that this would represent all the teaching and non-teaching staff, and 90% of the average daily attendance of students and was therefore completely unrealistic. The response: "We don't care. So many square metres of floor space equals so many people, so you're over the limit. Just put an automatic alarm system in" :(

raytaylor

4076 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1296

Trusted

#3465808 1-Mar-2026 14:16

In that case, cellular dialler. Its not an expensive add-on part.

Ray Taylor

There is no place like localhost

Spreadsheet for Comparing Electricity Plans Here

1 | 2