Martin Taylor (79) said he had called Spark every day since his landline went dead on Sunday. Each day he was told it would be fixed by next morning, then on Wednesday,
calls to his landline were diverted to his cellphone and he was given 100 free mobile minutes and a $20 credit.
He was not given a timeframe when his landline will be fixed and was not sure how many people were affected, but he knows his neighbour's landline is also out.
While ''very grateful'' for the help Spark had since given him, he was concerned ''an awful lot of people'' were not as fortunate as him to have a cellphone and depended on a landline to use in an emergency, or that their families would not be able to reach them and would worry.
''What amazes me is the lack of information from Spark. That there wasn't any publicly available information from them about what was happening, or how long it would be.''
The fault was last night confirmed as being in a Chorus line serving Spark lines in the Milton area. A spokesman confirmed 17 of Spark's Milton customers were affected, but could not say when the phones would be back on, other than ''as fast as possible''.
''We've got a crew out there working on it now ... we have to run a new line across the road, which obviously requires us to follow standard traffic management processes as well while the work is being done.''
It was not yet known what caused the fault, but the first priority was ''obviously to just get the lines back up and running,'' he said.
A Spark spokeswoman said if there was a problem with any Spark phones, the best place for customers to go for information was Spark's website to check the network status.
Faults, however, only got listed on the website if they affected a large amount of customers, otherwise Spark would be putting up information on problems affecting only one or two customers ''and it could become confusing and difficult for people to find information'', she said.
If customers were having problems with their landline they could contact Spark through the website or by calling 123.
