A still undiagnosed fault caused intermittent disruptions to Telecom’s landline, landline-to-mobile, dial-up Eftpos and possibly 111 emergency calls for two hours today, affecting an area from the Bombay Hills to the top of the North Island during the telco's peak calling period.

Telecom head of external media Mark Watts says the fault first hit at 10.40am.
Services were progressively fixed, and fully restored by approximately 12.40pm.

Mr Watts says the root cause of the fault, or how many customers it affected, has yet to be determined.

Landline to landline, landline to mobile, mobile to landline, and dial-up eftpos services phased in and out of operation for some customers some of the time during the brown-out, making it a step down from a fully-fledged black-out.

The Twitter account operated by ISP Orcon rarked on Telecom during the disruption, posting that due to "overloading .. 111 calls may be unable to progress”.

“There may have been some brief interruption [to emergency services]”, said Mr Watts, although he was not immediately aware of any instances of 111 calls not getting through. “That stuff gets absolute priority during any disruption.”