Attack on cell tower ‘outrageous’

Arson at Ma¯ngere second incident to cause outage for area’s customers

Spark has called attacks on cellphone towers during the coronavirus pandemic “outrageous” after an arson in an Auckland suburb cut some mobile phone services this week.

A Spark spokeswoman said there had been an arson attack on a cell tower in Ma¯ngere early Tuesday.

“While the majority of customers continued to be served by the surrounding towers, some customers will have experienced loss of service of voice, text and data,” she said.

“Spark has been working with police about threats made to some of our cell sites, as well as some instances of arson.

“Generally, damage has been fairly negligible, but this is the second event which has caused an outage in the surrounding area.”

Spark is monitoring sites and working to protect staff. “We think that acts of vandalism against critical infrastructure like cell towers is outrageous, particularly during a pandemic — when connectivity is more important than ever.”

A temporary cell tower will be deployed today to provide additional capacity to the local area while the permanent cell tower is repaired. The mobile outage is affecting some 3G and 4G customers in Ma¯ngere.

The attack is the latest in a string of attacks in which cell towers have been damaged, some linked to anti5G movements. The Spark spokeswoman said the company had received no threats relating to the tower in Ma¯ngere, “5G or otherwise”.

Anti-5G protesters have been linked to the destruction of a new 4G cell tower in the Far North last month, just before it was due to be switched on, and an arson attack on a cell site in Manurewa, which was posted to Facebook.

Attacks on cellphone towers are happening worldwide, as bogus stories tying 5G to coronavirus gain currency on social media. In the UK, there have been about 80 arson or vandalism attacks on cell towers since the start of the outbreak.

Vodafone UK chief executive Nick Jeffery described attacks on 5G towers as a “matter of national security”, and said police and counterterrorism authorities were investigating the attacks, which Jeffery labelled as the work of “deluded conspiracy theorists”.

Here, phone company executives have been more reserved in their public comments.

The most overt link was drawn by Geoff Thorn, head of the Telecommunications Forum, which represents Spark, Vodafone and 2degrees.

“We know that damage to mobile networks in other countries has been linked to groups opposed to 5G,” he earlier said.