About 800 customers in the small Central Hawke’s Bay town of Waipawa are without internet and phone lines after road workers damaged the Chorus network.
Chorus spokesperson Nathan Beumount told 1 NEWS the network damage occurred about a kilometre from Waipukarau and is "very frustrating".
"This has happened through no fault of our own and I apologise to anyone impacted by this issue."
Work is being done to repair it but it’s unclear when it will be fully restored.
"There are technicians onsite at the moment working to repair the damage but at this stage I don’t have an estimated time when the work will be done," he said.
Central Hawke’s Bay Mayor Alex Walker has described it as a “massive disruption” to local businesses as many can’t operate EFTPOS machines without an internet connection or use their landlines.
She says telco’s like Spark are supplying disrupted customers with extra mobile data to keep them online but says it shows the reliance the community has on a working internet connection.
Chorus’ website says the outage has affected "up to 849" customers and the first issues were reported yesterday afternoon.
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