Editorial: XT debacle

OPINION: When members of the public dial 111 they have the legitimate expectation that their call will be answered promptly and emergency services quickly dispatched.

But on Monday, when a Christchurch man attempted to alert the police to an attack on a Japanese man outside a suburban mall by four skinhead thugs, who were accompanied by two pitbull dogs, the failure of Telecom's troubled XT cellphone network prevented him from doing so.

This latest XT failure, especially the inability to make a 111 call, is disturbing, but it is also distressing that the attack occurred in the first place. And it is staggering that the police do not believe it was racially motivated, on the basis that it was triggered by the victim calling out to a friend and the assailants mistaking this action.

Given other unprovoked attacks which certainly did have racial features, it is difficult to believe that this incident did not have racial undertones or would have occurred had the victim not been of an Asian ethnicity.

Most residents celebrate the growing ethnic and cultural diversity as a development which enriches life in Christchurch. This diversity was shown last weekend when the Global Football Festival, featuring a vast array of ethnic-based teams, began in Bexley.

But a minority of residents resent the presence of migrants or students from other cultures, especially from Asian and African nations. According to the Christchurch City Council, 36 reports of racial abuse, either physical or verbal, were lodged with its report-it website, which was set up last year.

Undoubtedly other cases of abuse have occurred, with the victims reluctant to contact the authorities.

It is therefore important that all attacks or abuse in which race hate is suspected to have played a part are separately recorded. This would allow a fuller picture of the extent of the problem to be developed, and where the trouble spots are, as well as giving victims the confidence to come forward and report the abuse.

And those passers-by who observe race-related incidents, or indeed any crime, must be prepared to play their part. On Monday it was disappointing that passing motorists displayed a traditional New Zealand unwillingness to get involved in incidents and drove on by.

The bus driver who did help the victim, and the observer who attempted to summon police assistance, deserve praise but not so Telecom.

It is utterly unacceptable that its much-vaunted $574 million XT network, which lured customers to join with claims that it was state-of-the-art technology, could have failed four times in recent months. On one occasion some customers were cut off from XT for three days.

This costs businesspeople or tradespeople who require constant cellphone access and is hugely inconvenient for other users, especially those who no longer have a landline. For many, no amount of compensation can make up for the failures and nor can the decisions of two executives leading the XT project to fall on their swords and resign.

This alone creates a strong incentive for Telecom to fix the problem as customers who have experienced multiple failures could well have a legal right to break their contracts and move to another provider, while new customers will be hard to attract.

But it is even more serious that in parts of the country, including Christchurch, a switching process which is supposed to have allowed XT phones to use other networks did not work and, as a result, 111 calls could not be made.

The unavailability of the 111 number could create dangerous situations. It means that crimes, accidents and fires could not be reported to emergency services, unless a landline was within immediate access, and conceivably lives could be put at risk by the problem.

If the faults with the XT network cannot be swiftly resolved, and there is no guarantee that this will occur, the Government will have little choice but to regulate to ensure that 111 calls can get through when networks become unstable.

- © Fairfax NZ News