7:00pm Update from Chris Quin 
I am writing with another update from Gen-i and Telecom on this afternoon’s tragic event in Canterbury.

Like many of you, we are focused on supporting the Canterbury region. For us, this means prioritising the support we provide to clients who are involved in providing essential services and infrastructure.

While much of Telecom’s network in Christchurch remains operable, there is significant congestion and, due to widespread power outages, much of our network is currently working off backup power.

We have all key Telecom and Gen-i services running on Business Continuity plans (BCP).  Our primary objective is to restore communications to emergency services, civil defence, health and safety organisations and other critical providers. 

There are service issues on our client sites due to power loss, and we are working closely with affected clients to support their BCP activity and ensure service restoration is enabled.

Our Managed Customer Centre (MCC) is operating normally.  We have diverted service desk calls to our Wellington, Hamilton and Auckland contact centres.  Current service updates are being provided through these channels. There are existing processes to prioritise and support services based on this event. We are strongly engaged with Chorus, Telecom and all partners.

111 services remain stable and available and any issues connecting to 111 are likely to be due to network disruption due to damage, power outages or congestion. People trying to contact 111 should try again if they experience issues connecting. The Christchurch 111 call centre has been successfully diverted to Wellington and 111 calls are being prioritised.

All current mobile site outages are due to loss of power and many other sites are working on back-up power. This back-up power is limited as it is reliant on generators and batteries, so prolonged power issues will mean more sites are likely to go down over night.

We are working to maintain services and adding extra capacity to the mobile networks, including the installation of temporary mobile sites at triage centres in the central city.

Request for customers
To minimise the stress on the Telecom network and to conserve back-up power, we ask people to only use their phones for emergency calls.

People without power in their homes will not be able to use cordless landline phones as base stations require power.  If customers have analogue landline phones which do not require power, they will still work without power so they should use them instead.

Use of mobile phones for sending images and video from the area should be minimised to ease pressure on the network.

Telecom has moved to enable free calling from 280 payphones in and around Christchurch for local, national and mobile calls. Free payphone calling will be live from 3am on Wednesday 23 February. 

Our Christchurch offices
Our first priority is to confirm the safety and welfare of our people, which we are working towards right now.  We sincerely hope all your people in the region are safe as well.

All Telecom buildings have been safely evacuated. Our Christchurch offices is closed until further notice so that our people can stay at home to support their family, friends and community.  Our technical experts are in the field doing what they can to restore telecommunications in the area. 

Our thoughts continue to be with everyone in the Canterbury region and we are absolutely committed to doing everything we possibly can to help our people, our clients and the community.

For updates
If there is anything that we can do to support your business during this time, please contact your Client Manager or your normal service contacts at our MCC.  Alternatively, please visit www.gen-i.co.nz, as well as @Geni_ICT or @chrisjquin on Twitter, for further updates.
 
We will update you as more information becomes available. 

This is an incredibly sad and tragic day and our hearts are with Christchurch.

Chris Quin
CEO Gen-i Australasia

2:30pm Initial Update
The purpose of this is to give you an initial update from Gen-i on this afternoon’s earthquake in Canterbury.
 
We are working intensively to understand which services have been affected by today’s earthquake and get these restored as soon as possible.  Our primary objective is to restore communications to emergency services, civil defence and health and safety organisations.
 
There are service issues on client sites due to power loss and we are working directly with all our affected clients to support their Business Continuity Plan (BCP) activity.
 
Current service updates are being provided through these channels. There are existing processes to prioritise and support services based on this event. We are strongly engaged with Chorus, Telecom and all partners.

Our MCC call centre is operating normally.  We have diverted service desk calls to our Wellington, Hamilton and Auckland contact centres.

As elements of the mobile network are running on battery back up, Telecom is urging its customers to reserve power on the network and use mobiles for emergency calls only. 
 
In addition, due to the loss of power in customers’ homes, wireless landline phones will not be working as base stations require power.  If customers have analogue non-wireless landline handsets they will still work without power, so they are encouraged to use those for landline calls.

Our thoughts are with the people of Canterbury.

The safety and wellbeing of our people is our number one priority, and we have teams dedicated to contacting and supporting our people on the ground.
 
If there is anything that we can do to support your business during this time, please contact your Client Manager, or your normal service contacts at our Managed Customer Centre (MCC).
 
We will continue to keep you updated as more information becomes available.

Media Contact:

Carmela Salisbury
027 489 5224
carmela.salisbury@gen-i.co.nz