26 February 2008
Media Release
Did Telecom Mobilise its Full Army?
Auckland Chamber of Commerce chief executive Michael Barnett is asking new Telecom chief executive Paul Reynolds to
explain the Franklin telecom outage, and why it has taken so long to repair.
About 10,000 business and domestic subscribers in and around Pukekohe lost their Telecom, and in some cases EFTPOS
connections, last Thursday.
Some subscribers were still waiting to be reconnected four days later.
Mr Barnett says he wants to know “from the very top of Telecom” why the outage happened, and why it took so long to fix.
“Specifically, I need Mr Reynolds to get rid of a nagging fear I have that his company, and its subcontractors, didn’t
pull out all stops to fix the problem as quickly as humanly possible.”
Mr Barnett acknowledges that systems fail. “But critically important communication infrastructure should not be out for
four days. Business wants to know that Telecom spared no expense fixing the problem.”
“We have been promised a new look Telecom under Mr Reynold’s watch. What does this mean?”
ENDS