Hundreds of XT 111 calls failed

BY JOHN HARTEVELT

Only 83 out of 640 emergency 111 calls got through during an XT network outage, prompting Government moves to clamp down on Telecom within hours of the latest breakdown.

The Press has obtained a series of emails between government officials and Telecom sent during and after the latest of four XT outages on Monday, February 22.

On February 23, police sought an urgent report on the number of 111 calls dealt with on the night of the outage.

Ministry of Economic Development manager of information and communication technology regulation, Reg Hammond, sent the figures to Communications and Information Technology Minister Steven Joyce.

They showed that between 4pm and 11pm on February 22, only 83 of the 640 emergency 111 calls attempted south of Taupo were successful.

"Likely that many of the 640 calls were redials when people couldn't get through," Hammond told Joyce.

From noon on February 22 to noon the next day, 37 emergency XT calls were diverted to the Vodafone network, most of which were likely to have occurred at the height of the outage between 6.30pm and 8pm.

"It would seem likely that a number of 111 calls were unable to be connected, but Telecom cannot confirm the exact number," Hammond wrote.

Telecom spokesman Mark Watts told The Press "a lot" of calls would probably have been by engineers testing the 111 service.

"You can't and shouldn't assume that those 640 were authentic emergency calls, so therefore it's a completely false picture to suggest that only 83 people out of 640 people got through to the police," he said.

Telecom's figures showed 84 of the 640 calls got a ring tone and 37 of those had gone on to an operator.

The emails show that late on the night of the outage, Telecom emailed the ministry about the 111 service during the XT outage. Telecom had an "SOS mode" for when the network went down, but this had not kicked in because only the voice service failed.

"As a result, we advise customers to use a fixed line and not rely on XT during an outage or period of degraded performance," it said.

Hammond told Joyce that was a "rather disappointing response, given we raised it with them in the middle of the last outage".

During the failure, an unnamed ministry official told Joyce "there may be some calls on the minister to do something".

Hammond said he had told officials to start work immediately on whether there should be minimum call-quality standards set up for 111 calls on cellphones and whether there was a need for a new plan to make sure 111 calls get through when a network had problems.

A joint industry and government emergency services working group is considering a new code that companies would have to agree to.

The code would enforce new mobile call standards.

A spokeswoman for Joyce said yesterday the minister would not make a final call on new rules until an independent review of the XT problems was finished.

Watts said the core 111 system operated by Telecom was "extremely robust".

"In the rare circumstances when emergency calls do not connect at first attempt, backups and safeguards are in place," he said.

WITNESS UNABLE TO CALL FOR HELP

The 111 outage on February 22 meant Christchurch businessman Ron Ching was unable to call police while he went to stop a Japanese student being beaten up by skinheads at a bus stop.

An email obtained by The Press that was sent the next day by an aide in Communications and Information Technology Minister Steven Joyce's office said: "There was some inevitability about this, I guess."

Ching, who had been with XT for only five weeks before the attack and promptly switched back to Vodafone, said the failure was unacceptable when lives were in danger.

"During the earlier XT outages I stood by Telecom, but when I saw somebody injured and couldn't get help for them, I had to rethink," he said.

"Myself, my wife and my 16-year-old could have also been in jeopardy for helping.

"I was continually trying for 20 minutes to get through to 111 before police turned up. If this guy had been seriously hurt, even two minutes could be the difference between life and death."

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