A Katikati business came close to incurring a $10,000 fine last week due to a fault in Telecom's Broadband network.

Without internet access, Birchwood Packhouse was unable to provide the electronic data needed for fruit to be loaded for export at the Mount Maunganui wharf on Tuesday, August 14.

Fruit packed at Birchwood Packhouse in Tauranga nearly did not make it onto a ship last week because of a Telecom broadband fault.

Birchwood general manager Karen Roche says they managed to download the necessary data onto a memory stick and send it from another site.

'If we hadn't the fruit would not have been loaded and we could have been fined $10,000 plus faced the costs of returning the fruit to our Katikati coolstore.”

Karen became aware of the fault on Monday morning but later discovered many neighbours in Rea Road had been without broadband since Saturday.

'When we initially contacted Telecom to report the fault on Monday we were told the problem must be in our system so we called in a technician.

'After a thorough check he could find no problem and we contacted Telecom again.”

Karen says it took a long time waiting on the phone and on one occasion a Birchwood staff member had to ask for someone he could understand because the English skills of the person he was connected to were poor.

It was acknowledged the fault was in the Telecom network and on Tuesday Birchwood was advised it could be three days before the fault was repaired.

Karen says she was relieved when internet access was restored on Wednesday but it took even longer for her email to work.

'It was then that we received emails from Telecom, sent on Monday telling us the fault had been logged – which was not of much help as we couldn't access our emails.”

Telecom media manager Lucky Jackson says the fault was caused by damage to a cable, which affected service to a small number of customers in Katikati.

'Unfortunately repairing the cable turned out to be a more complex job than first expected as the cable runs under a state highway.

'While we are confident it would not have delayed the repair, we apologise to the customer for the incorrect information they received initially about the nature of the fault, and the lack of updates on when the problem would be fixed.

'We usually keep customers informed via text message on when they can expect service to resume, and are looking into why text updates were not sent in this case,” she says.