999 calls put on hold due to fault
EMERGENCY calls to Gloucestershire police were put on hold for three hours in the early hours of yesterday morning due to a fault on telephone lines.
Communications provider British Telecom informed police that calls from some parts of Cheltenham were not getting through. At 2.46am on Sunday, Gloucestershire police took to social networking site Twitter to tell people an outage to the 999 system was restricting some calls.
All numbers starting with 22, 23, 24, 27 and 28 in the Cheltenham area were affected.
The issue had been corrected three hours later and the problem resolved by 5.41am.
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To follow Gloucestershire police on Twitter visit https://twitter.com/Glos_Police.
Comments
by AW201Dresses
Tuesday, October 23 2012, 1:36PM
“I tried to ring my parents (who have a number starting with one of those pairs) to tell them - I thought that if there were an emergency they could use their mobiles which would be less stressful than realising 999 wasn't working in an already stressful situation. I couldn't get through to them for over 45 minutes (c. 11am) - they weren't on the phone. So that suggests it was more than just the 999 system that was down.
I saw the @GlosPolice tweet and tweeted back to ask what the alternative was for those without mobiles... perhaps a landline number people could call - better than nothing surely? They never replied to my tweet which was disappointing.
It's all well and good telling people it's not working but I agree with other comments:
(a) What is the alternative and
(b) What is being done to make sure this doesn't happen again.
This is all the more scary at a time when the news seems to be filled with tragic stories of people dying in house fires.”
by softtabor
Tuesday, October 23 2012, 11:33AM
“TIG need to follow this issue up!
We need to know what plan B is for the future!
What systems are being put into place for any future failings of lines of communications? Given the fact that a failure like this is very likely to result in loss of lives.
We need a statement of the actions that the Police are taking !!!”
by Ms_Superstar
Monday, October 22 2012, 7:28PM
“999 service out of order for three hours!! That is actually quite worrying. Don't they have some kind of backup?”