An investigation has been launched into the failure of some emergency 111 calls in Auckland this morning by Telecom. “I spoke to Telecom CEO Paul Reynolds this morning and agreed that officials from both the Ministry of Economic Development and the
An investigation has been launched into the failure of some emergency 111 calls in Auckland this morning by Telecom.
“I spoke to Telecom CEO Paul Reynolds this morning and agreed that officials from both the Ministry of Economic Development and the Police will be involved in this investigation,” said Minister for Communications and Information Technology Steven Joyce.
The Ministry of Economic Development will be closely involved in the review and the Ministry are appointing an independent technical expert to ensure that Government is fully confident that all issues are identified.
XT failure
Today's problems have no link to XT, but come on the heels of emergency calling problems during Telecom's most recent outage on its new network.
During a mobile outage, handsets on any phone company's network are supposed to still be able to function for emergency calls through a function that lets them poll for a signal on another company's network.
But during at least one case - in Christchurch where an XT customer tried to dial 111 after witnessing a brutal attack by four skinheads on two Asian students - his call could not go through.
Asked about the attack at Telecom's XT update on Tuesday, Dr Reynolds noted that other bystanders were able to place 111 calls, using alternative routes.
Trouble in Auckland
Of today's incident in South Auckland, Mr Joyce said, “I am determined to get to the bottom of what happened because public confidence in accessing emergency services must be retained."
A fault occurred at approximately 3:30am this morning at Telecom’s Papatoetoe exchange that resulted in some emergency 111 calls not connecting to an emergency services call centre.
The investigation will seek to determine the root causes of this fault as well as why back-up and call diversion systems did not work as intended and were not put in place earlier. This includes whether the police were informed in a timely manner that such a fault had occurred.
The investigation will also ensure that all failed emergency 111 calls were followed up and received a call-back; and in cases were no answer was received, a Police patrol car dispatched to check whether a genuine emergency was taking place.
Telecom shares (NZX: TEL) were down 2 cents to $2.29 in late morning trading.
