{"id":167028,"date":"2025-06-08T07:28:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-08T07:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/167028\/"},"modified":"2025-06-08T07:28:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-08T07:28:10","slug":"hmas-canberra-accidentally-blocks-wireless-internet-and-radio-services-in-new-zealand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/167028\/","title":{"rendered":"HMAS Canberra accidentally blocks wireless internet and radio services in New Zealand"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Department of Defence has acknowledged that HMAS Canberra, the Royal Australian Navy’s largest ship, accidentally took out a number of wireless internet and radio services across New Zealand earlier this week during a visit intended to celebrate the sister city relationship between Canberra and Wellington<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The incident occurred early on Wednesday morning, as the 230-metre navy flagship made its way through the Cook Strait en route to New Zealand’s capital, where the ship’s crew is set to be welcomed with a parade and concert on Saturday.<\/p>\n

According to local internet service providers (ISPs), HMAS Canberra’s navigation radar began interfering with 5GHz wireless access points \u2014 devices that bridge wired and wireless networks \u2014 in regions on both New Zealand’s North and South islands at around 2am.<\/p>\n

The radar interference triggered in-built switches in the devices that caused them to go offline, a safety precaution intended to prevent wireless signals from interfering with radar systems in New Zealand’s airspace.<\/p>\n

Stuff, an online news outlet in New Zealand, reported that the outages were first raised with Radio Spectrum Management<\/a>, an agency within the government’s business ministry.<\/p>\n

ADF chief calls for ‘different way of thinking’ on national resilience<\/a><\/p>\n

Australia’s Chief of the Defence Force, Admiral David Johnston, says the nation must be prepared to launch combat operations from its own soil.<\/p>\n

The agency notified the New Zealand Defence Force, which notified the Australian Defence Force.<\/p>\n

“On becoming aware, HMAS Canberra changed frequencies rectifying the interference,” a spokesperson for Australia’s Department of Defence said.<\/p>\n

“There are no ongoing disruptions.”<\/p>\n

The outages affected wireless internet and radio services in New Zealand’s Taranaki and Marlborough regions, the spokesperson added.<\/p>\n

Matthew Harrison, managing director of New Zealand-based ISP Primo, said he had never seen anything like the incident before.<\/p>\n

“This wasn’t just a blip. It was full-scale, military-grade radar triggering built-in safety protocols \u2026 and it rolled across our network in sync with the ship’s movement,” he wrote on LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“It’s not every day a warship takes your gear offline!”<\/p>\n

Mr Harrison said the incident underlined the fragility of New Zealand’s radio spectrum environment, with rural fixed wireless services having to share a frequency band with radar systems<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Department of Defence has acknowledged that HMAS Canberra, the Royal Australian Navy’s largest ship, accidentally took out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3161],"tags":[69867,3082,704,69869,69868,53,16,15,15815,24883],"class_list":{"0":"post-167028","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-hmas-canberra","9":"tag-internet","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-primo","12":"tag-royal-australian-navy","13":"tag-technology","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wi-fi","17":"tag-wireless"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114646568363698558","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}