Media release

Phone Outage - Update # 1- Alice Springs

Police


The Alice Springs Counter Disaster Committee met this morning to co-ordinate the town's response to the Territory-wide telecommunications problems.

Since early this morning communications throughout the Territory were affected by technical problems, including the mobile network and some land lines.

Police advised there were also problems with the triple zero number and an alternate number was designated.

Superintendent Michael White chaired this morning's Counter Disaster Committee meeting. Supt White said representatives of most affected agencies attended the meeting including delegates from the Department of Health, Airport Fire Service and Airport Police, DPI, Alice Springs Town Council, Power and Water, Dept of Chief Minister, St John Ambulance and the NT Police Fire and Emergency Services.

Telecommunications Minister Karl Hampton was also in attendance.

Supt White said several issues were identified as a result of the lack of communications, and contingency plans were put in place to deal with these.

"While the problem appears to have been resolved this morning, it was important to bring the committee together to ensure all essential services were fully briefed and aware of how widely spread the issues was."