Parts of South Island offline after fibre cables cut

A large part of the lower South Island has gone offline after fibre cables were accidentally cut in two incidents on Wednesday morning.

Phone and internet outages have been reported in Dunedin, Mosgiel, East Taieri, Balclutha and Cromwell.

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The website Down Detector indicated One New Zealand, Spark, 2degrees and Slingshot all had spikes in reports for internet outages just after 10am.

One New Zealand had the most reports with 102 at 10.12am.

A One NZ spokesman said the company was aware of an issue affecting its cell sites and internet in the Dunedin area.

"This is due to two isolated incidents where fibre cables into the area have been accidentally cut by third parties," the spokesman said.

Engineers were on site working to fix it and it was hoped internet service would be restored by 1pm.

A Fire and Emergency NZ spokeswoman said it had also been affected by the internet outage and had switched to its backup system.