An estimated 5000 house-holds in Gibbston, Arrowtown and Wanaka, plus some areas of Alexandra and Cromwell, were left without Internet or phones for about three and a-half hours yesterday, after a contractor struck a fibre optic cable near Lake Hayes.
"On this particular job, the contractor was wary that a fibre optic cable was in the vicinity and has worked closely with Telecom to ensure the cable remained intact," Mr Kunath said.
Telecom had been on-site and marked the route of the cable and two Telecom spotters were on-site at the time the cable was struck.
"The location where the cable was struck was not in the vicinity of the marked route," he said.
The council regretted the incident and was disappointed so many people had been inconvenienced.
"From our perspective we are more than satisfied that our contractor has taken every possible precaution to avoid such an occurrence and obviously we will be keen to ensure that this situation is not repeated in the future."
Yesterday, Mr Kunath said Telecom hoped to have remedied the outage by 6.30pm.
