Telecom NZ compensates XT outage victims

Gen-i corporate customers left in the dark for three days by Telecom New Zealand's XT network outage last week will have four weeks of charges waived as compensation.

The compensation was offered after it emerged that Telecom had been forced to lend some customers CDMA handsets just so they could make calls.

The offer was also made to Telecom's own retail small-to-medium enterprise customers.

Those whose service was only "degraded" on Wednesday last week would get two weeks of plan charges free.

"We make this gesture in recognition of the inconvenience and frustration the outage caused our customers, but we fully appreciate that what our customers most need is to have confidence that we are putting every conceivable effort into ensuring that the XT network delivers for our customers," Telecom chief Paul Reynolds said.

"We do recognise that businesses in particular suffered severe disruption during the outage so felt that fairness dictated that we take an extra step for them."

Consumer users were also compensated. Postpaid customers out for the full three days will get a fortnight's free service, one week if they suffered a day of degraded service.

And prepaid customers will get a $20 credit if they had no service for three days, or $10 if they had poor service for just the Wednesday.

The credits applied to all XT customers based in areas south of Taupo to the bottom of the South Island who were impacted by the outage, Telecom said.

They would be automatically applied to customer accounts, the telco said.

Reynolds moved to reassure customers that "all possible steps" were being taken to ensure the stability of the network.

"We will leave no stone unturned as we commence the independent review of XT to ensure we are giving New Zealand the world class network it demands and deserves," he said.