Astounding planned outage.

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gbwelly

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#324302 25-Mar-2026 17:45

There is currently a planned 2degrees mobile outage where I live. The official outage period is 23rd - 27th March. There has been no connectivity except 111 today (so far). God help anyone who runs a local business using a 2Degrees mobile. If I just declared a planned outage window with a 5 day range at work and took a whole office down for a day my head would end up on a stick. We are talking an area with about 20,000 people.

Am I being unreasonable?

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#3473695 25-Mar-2026 17:56

Yes very unreasonable you are not comparing Apples with Apples

This is ground up rebuild including new mast for better coverage

boosacnoodle

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#3473697 25-Mar-2026 17:59

Frankly end users don't care at all whether it's a small upgrade or a complete replacement. I don't think it's reasonable at all, frankly - especially could they not set-up a COW while doing the upgrade? I recall a similar scenario in both Feilding and Lincoln recently. 2degrees seems to be the only one I've seen to take down sites for quite so long for these upgrades.

Linux

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#3473702 25-Mar-2026 18:13

Look at the number of upgrades going on across NZ at the same time how many COWS do you think NZ mobile carriers have?

Dargaville was offline for 3 days for the Huawei to Ericsson and add 5G and really little impact due to Wi-Fi calling

gbwelly

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#3473736 25-Mar-2026 20:42

Linux:

Look at the number of upgrades going on across NZ at the same time how many COWS do you think NZ mobile carriers have?

Dargaville was offline for 3 days for the Huawei to Ericsson and add 5G and really little impact due to Wi-Fi calling

The number of upgrades is not the customer's problem.

"Mobile coverage may be degraded" says the Outages page. They would know when they are doing the work, how long they would expect it to take, and the fact that it would be a full outage.

Their 'About' page says "We will provide advance warning by text, where possible, if you frequent an area that is going to be impacted by an outage."

That is untrue. The phones in my family would probably 'frequent' the area 99% of the time, no notification was sent.

If one of my children was injured at school and was shipped off to hospital I would be none the wiser until they failed to come home, or someone eventually drove round to tell me. The school doesn't use WhatsApp. This clown show cost me a 45 minute trip to pick someone up who had messaged me to say they were working late, but I didn't receive it until I was outside their work. Glad it wasn't something serious.

How was it determined that there was little impact in Dargaville due to Wi-Fi calling? No-one called to complain?

timmmay

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#3473743 25-Mar-2026 20:46

A four day outage? Or random outages within a 4 day period? That doesn't seem reasonable to me. I'd change providers.

Handle9

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#3473745 25-Mar-2026 20:50

timmmay:

I'd change providers.

This is the only feedback telcos seem to act on. Leave and tell them exactly why.

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#3473747 25-Mar-2026 20:57

timmmay:

A four day outage? Or random outages within a 4 day period? That doesn't seem reasonable to me. I'd change providers.

@timmmay It is a planned outage as the site is getting upgraded from the ground up including a new mast - the planned work was even posted on the 2degrees website

grantius

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#3473749 25-Mar-2026 20:59

Deoending in the tower design if they are ripping out the whole thing and replacing, how do you expect them to do that? Think of the workers who have to work leaning against a transmitter?

Putting a COW in place for every single upgrade is just illogical, that means any upgrade they do they have to lodge new license requests just for a temporary license?

Better to just rip and replace, like you said emergency calling is still working so worst case just go get a SIM from spark or one and use that temporarily ?

timmmay

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#3473752 25-Mar-2026 21:00

Even posted on the website???!!! Wow! If they knew the site was going to be down for that long I'd expect people who live in the area or are regularly in the area get a letter in the post, or an email at the least, maybe along with a SIM card for a provider that would give them a week of coverage while it's down. Simply putting the information on the website is really not good enough. Mobile connectivity is some peoples only connectivity. Sure there is 111 cover using other providers, but that's really not customer friendly.

Move providers. Tell them why.

grantius

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#3473753 25-Mar-2026 21:02

timmmay:

Even posted on the website???!!! Wow! If they knew the site was going to be down for that long I'd expect people who live in the area or are regularly in the area get a letter in the post, or an email at the least, maybe along with a SIM card for a provider that would give them a week of coverage while it's down. Simply putting the information on the website is really not good enough. Mobile connectivity is some peoples only connectivity. Sure there is 111 cover using other providers, but that's really not customer friendly.

Move providers. Tell them why.

They all do this, so that boomer type of response isn't exactly gonna solve anything?

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#3473755 25-Mar-2026 21:03

timmmay:

A four day outage? Or random outages within a 4 day period? That doesn't seem reasonable to me. I'd change providers.

@timmmay lol

So all carriers have had multi day outages when upgrading hardware so which one are you going to change to?

My work SparkNZ was offline for 3 days when they removed the microwave link and went to fibre to the site and then removed the Huawai kit and installed the Nokia kit

Not a very well thought out post

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boosacnoodle

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#3473757 25-Mar-2026 21:06

It makes sense in cities where you'll have overlapping cells and may have a slight degradation in service while the upgrade is carried out but in places with 20,000+ population, it just doesn't cut the mustard. So people with FWA and mobile on the same carrier would be totally SOL? An argument against bundling if I ever heard one.

Handle9

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#3473759 25-Mar-2026 21:08

grantius:

timmmay:

Even posted on the website???!!! Wow! If they knew the site was going to be down for that long I'd expect people who live in the area or are regularly in the area get a letter in the post, or an email at the least, maybe along with a SIM card for a provider that would give them a week of coverage while it's down. Simply putting the information on the website is really not good enough. Mobile connectivity is some peoples only connectivity. Sure there is 111 cover using other providers, but that's really not customer friendly.

Move providers. Tell them why.

They all do this, so that boomer type of response isn't exactly gonna solve anything?

Pretty clearly they haven’t in this case

Linux

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#3473760 25-Mar-2026 21:09

timmmay:

Move providers. Tell them why.

@timmmay yeah I am moving provider cause you are going to be providing better coverage and faster speeds after the work is complete

Handle9

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#3473762 25-Mar-2026 21:10

Linux:

timmmay:

A four day outage? Or random outages within a 4 day period? That doesn't seem reasonable to me. I'd change providers.

@timmmay lol

So all carriers have had multi day outages when upgrading hardware so which one are you going to change to?

My work SparkNZ was offline for 3 days when they removed the microwave link and went to fibre to the site and then removed the Huawai kit and installed the Nokia kit

Not a very well thought out post

And telcos wonder why people hate them.

It’s not about the outage. It’s about the typically abysmal way they treat their customers.

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