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An inquiry will be held into Friday's 111 outage after a third of emergency calls failed to get through for about two hours on Friday morning, Communications and Information Technology Minister Steven Joyce says.
A fault at about 3.30am at Telecom's Papatoetoe exchange in south Auckland affected emergency calls from mobile phones and landlines in the Auckland region on Friday morning.
Telecom said the problem had been fixed and call centre staff were ringing back any phone numbers that attempted a call to 111 emergency services, but failed, to ensure no genuine calls were missed.
Some people who dialled the emergency number got either an engaged signal or the call would not go through.
This latest issue is further embarrassment to the telecommunications giant after earlier this week scrambling to deal with their forth outage of their flagship XT mobile network in two months.
Joyce said there did not appear to be any connection between the XT problems and the 111 failure.
He revealed that between 4am to 6am about one third of calls were not successful on the first attempt and there was "some question" about when police were told of the problem.
"Apparently for a period of time the police were concerned they weren't given sufficient notification."
Telecom boss Paul Reynolds talked to Police Commissioner Howard Broad about the issue on Friday morning.
Telecom is conducting an inquiry into the failure, starting immediately and Joyce said officials from the Ministry of Economic Development (MED) and the police would also be involved.
The MED would appoint an independent technical expert to ensure all issues were identified.
"I am determined to get to the bottom of what happened because public confidence in accessing emergency services must be retained," Joyce said.
The investigation would seek to determine the cause of the fault as well as why back-up and call diversion systems did not work and were not put in place earlier.
This included whether the police were informed fast enough.
The investigation would 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.
Joyce said there were penalties for failure of delivering the 111 service under the Telecommunications Service Obligations (TSO) Deed.
On Friday morning, Telecom's media relations manager Mark Watts told Radio New Zealand the company was disappointed about what happened.
"New Zealanders rely hugely on 111 emergency services calling and that's why Telecom has thrown everything it could at it this morning to put in the necessary diversions and to get it working for callers. And it is now."
Inspector Karen Wilson from the police northern communications centre said police were not aware of serious consequences resulting from people unable to get through on the emergency number.
The centre was originally made aware of the problem by people telling police, who had arrived on callouts, they were having problems getting through on the 111 number.
It was a "vital service" that everyone should have access to, she said.
Watts said Friday's problems were "not a good look" following earlier issues with their XT mobile network.
The most recent outage happened on Monday for customers living south of Taupo.
During that occasion, one customer was unable to get through to the 111 service to report an assault on a man in Christchurch.
The government is considering regulations to ensure 111 calls get priority treatment.
Telecom has spent millions of dollars compensating customers affected by the XT network problems.
The company has said the latest 111 problem in Auckland had nothing to do with the XT network.
Have you been affected by the problems with the 111 system? ONE News would like to hear from you. Email news@tvnz.co.nz or call 0800 886 397
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