Telecom has apologised for a fault that left part of the King Country without the 111 emergency phone service for up to three hours this week.
Spokesman Mark Watts said today that things had gone wrong and "we're very sorry for that".
Telecom only discovered the problem when a farmer
could not get through after a fatal crash outside his house on Tuesday.
The fault was the third significant 111 failure this year, following problems with the XT network and the service in south Auckland.
Te Kuiti was without a 111 service for up to three hours because a Telecom technician failed to alert his bosses to a problem at the town's exchange.
Police were also unaware of the problem.
Otorohanga Mayor Dale Williams was outraged and said people in rural areas like Te Kuiti relied heavily on such services.
He described the error as "absolutely disgusting" and said it would give people little confidence in Telecom.
"In situations like this the first question to ask is how come it happened and Telecom themselves, as owner of the network, were unaware of the situation," Mr Williams said today.
"How many times does it happen when Telecom needs to front up and reassure people that in fact they have their eye on the ball and they are capable of delivering?"
Mr Watts told Radio New Zealand that Telecom's sympathy went out to the family of the accident victim, a 47-year-old woman from Singapore, to Mr Williams and the local community.
The company was trying to get to the bottom of the particular technical fault at that exchange which masked the usual alarms when there was a problem with the 111 system.
It was compounded later in the day by a "failure in the chain of human communication".
"Someone didn't pass on that the 111 system was down and that compounded the particular circumstances of the fault," Mr Watts said.
He would not say whether by a Telecom staff member or a contractor.
- NZPA
