False 111 Calls Slow To One In 8 Minutes

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30534, 1 September 1964, Page 1

False 111 Calls Slow To One In 8 Minutes

From two calls a minute i last week, the emergency 111 telephone service to police,] fire .and ambulance had slowed down to one every

eight minutes yesterday. Mr ci. G. Harris, the Post Office divisional, engineer in charge of equipment, said there were 17 calls on 111 between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. yesterday and tiine of them were legitimate emergency calls. The rest were false or accidents. Mr Harris said subscribers in places like Diamond Harbour and Kaiapoi, who were meant to dial 0 and ask for special telephone services, sometimes dialled 1 for Christchurch, then commenced tp dial the special service number. This activated the emergency hooter in the toll room. It also meant that the price of the call went on the subscriber’s account, whereas dialling 0 in the proper way cost nothing.

The main problem for the Post Office yesterday was the faults service. “We appealed to people to let us know if they had any difficulties after the cut-over and this has snowballed on us. A lot of people think there has been a fault when, in fact, they have used one of the old numbers which has now been changed. These complaints take a long time, to handle.” One unexpected problem has been the sound of calls through the Linwood and HiHmorton exchanges. “They have a different ringing tone.” said Mr Harris, “rather more musical than the others.” “People have been complaining that they are getting a mixture of the ordinary ring and the ‘busy’ signal. In fact the cadence is the same but it is a different note.” But Mr Harris was sure that the Post Office was now past the worst of the confusion engendered by the changeover to new exchanges and new numbers.