Chorus Outages: Is the Internet Down in My Area?

When your connection drops, the first question is almost always the same: is the internet down in my area, or is the problem inside my own home? In New Zealand the answer usually starts with Chorus, because Chorus owns the fibre and copper lines that carry most broadband no matter which company sends the bill. Its outage map answers the question by street address, and learning to read it — along with the lights on your fibre box — saves a lot of pointless modem restarts. This guide walks through every check, in order, and shows you when to stop troubleshooting and report a fault.

How to check for an outage in your area

Work through these checks in order. Each one rules out a different cause, so by the end you will know whether the fault is on the network or something you can fix yourself.

1. Open the Chorus outage map and search your address. The Chorus internet outages map shows reported faults, the affected area, which services are hit, the current status and an estimated restoration time. If your street is listed, the fault is being worked on and there is nothing to fix at your end.
2. Check your provider’s status page too. A fault inside your provider’s own network — a DNS problem, a billing-system failure, a faulty exchange card — will not show on the Chorus map. Our national internet outage guide lists where each provider posts live status updates.
3. Check the power. If your street has a power cut, the fibre box and modem go down with it, even though the line itself is fine. Your local electricity lines company runs its own outage map, separate from the broadband one.
4. Ask a neighbour on a different provider. If they are down too, the fault is almost certainly on the shared network rather than inside your house. If they are fine, the problem is more likely your gear, your plan or your account.

If Chorus is not your fibre company

Chorus covers most of the country, but not all of it. Four other local fibre companies run the network in specific regions, and each publishes its own status page:

• Enable covers Christchurch and much of Canterbury. Faults appear on the Enable network outages page.
• Tuatahi First Fibre (formerly Ultrafast Fibre) covers Hamilton, Tauranga, New Plymouth and the Whanganui region; its Tuatahi First Fibre network status page shows current faults. If you are in the Waikato, our Hamilton outage guide has the local detail.
• Northpower Fibre covers Whangārei and Kaipara in Northland.

In every case — Chorus or otherwise — faults are reported through your retail provider, not to the fibre company directly. The fibre company only takes faults from the retailers that sell services over its network.

What the fibre box is telling you

The white box on the wall is the ONT (Optical Network Terminal), and it is the fibre company’s equipment, not your provider’s. Its job is to convert the light signal coming down the fibre into a normal network connection your router can use. Because it sits at the very edge of the network, its lights are the single most reliable way to tell whether the connection is reaching your house at all.

On the common ONT 500 model, four lights matter. The table below shows what each one means when things are working and when they are not.

Older ONT 100 and 200 models label things differently, with POWER, OPTICAL and ALARM lights instead; an ALARM light means the box itself has failed, and Chorus notes that restarting it is unlikely to help. Chorus keeps a full set of model guides on its ONT fibre box support pages, and the detailed ONT 500 light guide shows exactly where each light sits. Our own Chorus ONT and fibre box guide explains every model and includes a light checker.

Red LOS light? Stop troubleshooting

A red LOS (Loss of Signal) light means the fibre signal is not arriving at your box. Restarting your modem, swapping cables or resetting the Wi-Fi will not change that, because none of those things is the cause. Log the fault with your provider, who raises it with the fibre company. A technician may need to visit if the fault is on the lead-in — the section of fibre that runs from the street to your property — which is a common failure point after storms, tree work or digging in the garden.

Power cuts, batteries and fibre

Unlike the old copper phone line, which carried its own power from the exchange, fibre carries no electricity. The ONT and your router both plug into mains power in your home, so during a blackout your internet stops even though the fibre line and the wider network are completely healthy. That is not an outage in the network sense — it is a power problem, and the connection returns on its own once the power does.

This matters most for anyone who relies on the connection to call 111 in an emergency. If someone in your household is medically dependent or cannot easily use a mobile, ask your provider about a backup battery for the ONT and router, and keep a charged mobile phone as a fallback. A battery only powers the fibre box for a limited time, so it is a bridge, not a full replacement for mains power.

Copper lines and the switch-off

Chorus is retiring its copper network. It brought the nationwide switch-off forward from 2030 to the end of 2028, and only about 44,000 copper lines remained nationwide at 30 June 2026 — fewer than 1,000 of them inside the fibre footprint, with the rest in areas fibre has not yet reached. Under the Commerce Commission’s Copper Withdrawal Code, Chorus must give at least six months’ notice before copper is withdrawn, can only stop supplying copper where fibre is available, and must install fibre before copper is switched off if you have ordered it.

If your copper connection keeps failing, a fibre installation is usually the lasting fix rather than another repair. Before the change, check anything that depends on the copper line — medical alarms, monitored security systems, older EFTPOS terminals and fax machines — because some of that equipment needs reconfiguring or replacing to work over fibre. Our fibre speeds guide covers what you actually get when you switch across the different plan tiers.

When it is not an outage

If the outage map is clear, your neighbours are online and the fibre box lights are all normal, the problem is inside your house. Work through our internet-not-working guide — modem restart, cables, Wi-Fi and account status — in order. If the connection works but keeps cutting out rather than staying down, our guide to internet that keeps dropping out goes further into intermittent faults.

Some faults are specific to a provider’s own systems rather than the shared fibre network, so it is worth checking provider-specific steps: see our guides to Spark outages, One NZ outages and 2degrees outages for the checks that apply to each.

Complaints and compensation

Your contract is with your retail provider, so any complaint goes to them first. The Consumer Protection steps to making a complaint explain how to put it in writing and what to ask for. If the problem is still unresolved six weeks after you first raised it, the complaint is treated as deadlocked and you can take it to the Telecommunications Dispute Resolution (TDR) service, which is free for households and small businesses and can direct a provider to fix the issue or, where warranted, pay compensation. For larger claims, the Disputes Tribunal hears cases up to $60,000, a limit raised from $30,000 on 24 January 2026.

Disclaimer: This guide is general information only. Outage maps, the copper switch-off timetable, compensation limits and fibre-company coverage are accurate as at September 2026 and can change. During an active fault, always follow the advice given by your own provider.

Frequently asked questions

How do I know if the internet is down in my area?

Search your address on the Chorus outage map, or your local fibre company’s status page, and then check your own provider’s status page. If both are clear and your neighbours are online, the problem is most likely inside your home rather than on the network.

Can I report an outage to Chorus directly?

No. Chorus and the other fibre companies take faults from retail providers, not from households. Report the problem to the company that bills you, and they will raise it with the fibre company and arrange any technician visit.

What does a red light on the Chorus box mean?

A red LOS light means the fibre signal is not reaching the box, which is a network or lead-in fault. Contact your provider rather than restarting equipment, because a modem restart cannot restore a signal that is not arriving.

How long do Chorus outages take to fix?

The outage map shows an estimated restoration time for each fault. Minor faults are often cleared within hours, while cables damaged by storms, flooding or roadworks can take longer because a crew has to locate and repair the break.

Does a power cut take down fibre internet?

Yes. Fibre carries no power of its own, so the fibre box and router both need mains electricity. During a power cut the connection stops unless you have a charged backup battery for both, and it returns automatically once the power is restored.