Telecom scrambles to appease DHBs

BY KATE NEWTON

Telecom is scrambling to offer health providers alternatives to its beleaguered XT network as a third district health board confirms it is considering dropping its contract.

The Dominion Post reported yesterday that Hutt Valley and Capital & Coast district health boards had asked to switch to another network, saying the problems with XT were putting patients at risk if on-call doctors could not be contacted.

Capital & Coast would not say how much its 341-phone contract is worth, but Hutt Valley's 49-phone contract is more than $1 million.

MidCentral DHB said yesterday it was also reviewing its contract.

A spokesman said no lives had been threatened by the network failures but the health board had experienced problems.

He would not elaborate on what they were, or the size of MidCentral's XT contract, saying that was commercially sensitive information.

Meanwhile, South Canterbury DHB has chosen to keep its 40 staff with XT phones on the network, but halted plans to upgrade any other mobile phones to the network. Chief executive Chris Fleming said staff had to revert to pagers and old Telecom technology during the failures, at "considerable inconvenience".

"We are working with Telecom and will continue to monitor the overall effects for our DHB."

Telecom Gen-i chief executive Chris Quin said the company was contacting business customers such as hospitals and emergency services to offer alternatives to XT.

"This can involve a move to [old network] CDMA, or additional services such as call diversion. For some key users, another Sim card for a short period of time while we stabilise the network is the right thing to do."

Customers who still decided to switch from Telecom to another mobile provider would not be charged break fees, a spokeswoman said.

At least three health boards had taken up Telecom's offer of alternative services. Hawke's Bay and Nelson-Marlborough staff were relying on pagers and the CDMA network, while Canterbury DHB staff had been given 2degrees Sim cards or CDMA phones to use.

Among other businesses Telecom had contacted was police.

Police spokesman Grant Ogilvie would not say whether police were reviewing their XT contract. However, the failures had not affected operations significantly.

- © Fairfax NZ News