Astounding planned outage.

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › Astounding planned outage.

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meow
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#3474836 28-Mar-2026 20:30

Reading this thread I have to say wow.

People depend on mobile for everything - broadband, calling, messaging etc.

@Linux I get what you’re saying but in this case I think they needed temporary measures to ensure people stayed online. Taking a large area offline like this is frankly, inexcusable. There are people who use mobile broadband so don’t simply have “WiFi Calling”. Sure, you can call 111 but in this case I think a COW should have been popped in to provide temporary infill while work happened.

I’ve been subject to site upgrades but have always had coverage from other sites. A community like Wainuiomata for example has a hill to get into the Hutt / Wellington that could close. People are reliant on mobile and old tower or not people do need to stay connected. Not everyone has, or can afford a backup.

This isn’t Auckland where you’ve got multiple towers to fall back on. Mobile is an essential service, problems occur - sure but this one is frankly rubbish.

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
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yitz

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#3474837 28-Mar-2026 21:07

Also whatever happened to femtocells? Thought we were all supposed to have one built into our ISP-supplied RGWs by now 🤔

MaxineN

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#3474838 28-Mar-2026 21:11

I'll bite and play devils advocate. Only because Wainuiomata when I wore the green hat I had quite a few coverage faults around this area. Half of them was because the Glendale site would overshoot in Homedale(One NZ issue... probably fixed for good now). Other half were capacity.

It would be better to take the crappiest cell site offline first before sorting out the sites that flank or are geographically blocked. Wellington is very hilly, I don't think we need to be reminded of that.

A COW may not actually provide enough coverage and also may not be logistically(or financially actually, some may not know this but a lot of reasons why upgrades to sites don't happen is mostly money before resource consents) possible. Obviously the site dubbed Moore's street (by the water tower) isn't either pointing at Wainuiomata or the trees need their tips trimmed(or both). Does take additional time to setup a COW too you know... So better to get it replaced ASAP and then get it turned back on ASAP with the original layers before tuning your new layers and unlocking the site. Wainuiomata is challenging.

A good example of the above is when my One NZ cellsite that is a stones throw away had it's 5G upgrade. It was dead for 2 weeks, and my nearest cell wasn't pointing at my residence... and yea you can imagine how little fun that was when your Entra MFA for your Chorus SP login is a cellphone call that would fail about 70% of the time.

To not play devil's advocate...(and where my opinion actually lies with)

Hold your carriers accountable and let them know. It is within their power to at least send out notifications and emails about pending upgrades in YOUR area so you can at least plan and prepare... not find out when it actually happens.

We can have it better. We should have it better. Telco's should put their profits where it really matters in customer service, experts and more money into the infrastructure.

I don't think I need Michael reminding me how shit Paraparaumu was planned for some cell sites. Anyone go look at the Lindale site and you'll see what I mean.

Ramblings from a mysterious lady who's into tech. Warning I may often create zingers.

SomeoneSomewhere

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#3474839 28-Mar-2026 21:11

(This written before MaxineN's post)

Except there are other towers to fall back on:

So I wonder why the loss of all coverage?

MaxineN

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#3474840 28-Mar-2026 21:12

SomeoneSomewhere:

Except there are other towers to fall back on:

So I wonder why the loss of all coverage?

See my above post.

A COW may not actually provide enough coverage and also may not be logistically(or financially actually, some may not know this but a lot of reasons why upgrades to sites don't happen is mostly money before resource consents) possible. Obviously the site dubbed Moore's street (by the water tower) isn't either pointing at Wainuiomata or the trees need their tips trimmed(or both). Does take additional time to setup a COW too you know... So better to get it replaced ASAP and then get it turned back on ASAP with the original layers before tuning your new layers and unlocking the site. Wainuiomata is challenging.

Ramblings from a mysterious lady who's into tech. Warning I may often create zingers.

SomeoneSomewhere

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#3474841 28-Mar-2026 21:15

Yeah, we posted past each other.

Propagation analysis is certainly not easy.

I wonder if Spark just has terrible coverage or if they got the magic locations.

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#3475753 30-Mar-2026 21:13

Photo of new / upgraded 2degrees site in Wainuiomata central that must providing better coverage / faster speed compared to the old site

boosacnoodle

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#3475762 30-Mar-2026 22:49

What's hanging off the middle? Usually just see a GPS antenna but that looks like a lot more.

michaelmurfy

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#3475769 30-Mar-2026 23:20

boosacnoodle: What's hanging off the middle? Usually just see a GPS antenna but that looks like a lot more.

Actually... that may be the reason why it took out a huge chunk of Wainuiomata.

It's a point to point link to a cell tower up on the Round Hill water tower site that doesn't seem to have any other connection. This should have been better planned so it wasn't so disruptive.

SomeoneSomewhere: Surprised anyone lost coverage (not just degraded) from this unless there was an actual hill in a way (to be fair, Wainui is full of hills). I would expect 2D's coverage with the central tower missing to still be better than Spark's.

Poor handling of load-shedding?

There is your answer. I'd actually put this down to poor handling (one of the major cell sites being dropped offline by an upgrade of a smaller site) and poor design (no redundant backhaul path to a vital cell site covering a large part of Wainuiomata). If anything happens to this cell site like for example a car crashes into it then there goes almost the whole of Wainuiomata for 2degrees coverage as it currently takes out 2 sites.