Another Telecom NZ failure, another exec walks

Telecom New Zealand mobile services have once more failed, prompting the exit of yet another senior executive.
 
The XT-branded 3G and CDMA networks went down for two hours last week because of handoff issues.
 
Spokesperson Kath Murphy said it was because some devices had failed to re-register with their networks after moving between base stations, the NZ Herald reported.
 
Murphy said it was uncertain how many customers had been affected by the outage.
 
She said the problem was not related to the serious network faults that plagued the XT network last month.
 
The XT network, supplied by Alcatel-Lucent, has crashed several times since December. A radio network controller last month experienced a “severe reduction in voice traffic” when up to 81 of the 450 cell sites served by the RNC lost all services, said the company said
 
Meanwhile, TNZ’s director of mobile Paul Hamburger will not renew his contract with the company, which ends July 8, according to several reports
 
A TNZ spokesperson said the decision was due to “personal and professional reasons,” according to the National Business Review.
 
Telecom’s chief technical officer Frank Mount resigned in February in the wake of the XT network’s fourth major outage, with Alcatel-Lucent's New Zealand country manager Steve Lowe also resigning the same day. 
 
Meanwhile, rival Vodafone also experienced network outages in Wellington and Taupo earlier this month, said the NZ Herald. It blamed the problem on network congestion.