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New Zealand's mobile network would be unable to handle a serious emergency, as thousands of texts from worried phone users would overload the network.
The admission, from Vodafone spokesperson Paul Brislen, follows minor earthquakes in Auckland last week. "An earthquake in Wellington, and everyone will send a text message. There's no predicting or rhyme nor reason to it... it would create merry hell with the network. I don't know that we would cope, I don't know that anybody would cope with such an event... We would try to manage the traffic. We would encourage everybody to stay off the phone in that situation."
There have been several moments of minor congestion over the past year, including in the past week, when a congestion alarm went unnoticed.
"It could be as simple as the cricket. We're winning the cricket and everybody's texting, 'Are you watching this?' and that alone would trigger a blip on the network. If there is a problem, everybody re-sends every 10 seconds until it goes through, and that creates its own congestion. It creates a wave effect that continues through the day."
At New Year, almost one million texts an hour were sent, many from overseas, overloading the system.
"No one can build a network that can handle that."
But Ernie Newman, head of Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand, said text congestion was more serious than has been made out.
"I do know there have been some significant problems. There are lots of times when networks get overloaded in places. I do have a sense there's more to this story than meets the eye. It's one that they've got to fix."
Newman said an expectation had been created by mobile companies that text messages would be received instantly. "It's potentially more than just inconvenience to customers if these things get held up. Potentially, it can have really serious consequences because these things are used in a business setting. People are encouraged to use text messaging for serious business as well. And I think it's important for Telecom and Vodafone to come clean when they are having problems."
Communications analyst Paul Budde said: "The messaging service is not a guaranteed service... It's not as secure as picking up the telephone.
"In an emergency don't use SMS. Don't send a message saying: 'I'm dying here on the floor, please send help'. It is known that you have this slight risk that your SMS doesn't get through."
But Brislen said worried people should text relatives rather than call,as the messages take up less room on the network.
Brislen said the network is being upgraded to handle the expected increase in texts as new phones will be able to text entire contact lists in one go. "The boys are hard at work at the moment trying to work out how to handle that capacity."
