Police communications network restored

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The police communication network has been restored following a fibre optic cable failure which affected about 130 police stations around the country this afternoon.

Police communications centres were forced to move to manual processing for some procedures following the failure, which police said was not caused by heavy rain and strong winds lashing the North Island today.

However, the failure did not affect the 111 service, said Superintendent Kelvin Powell, acting national manager for police communications centres.

"We have measures in place to deal with situations like this and they worked well," he said.

The network problems affected about 130 police stations, three communications centres and Police National Headquarters.

The problem started at a site in Tawa, north of Wellington, and the network was restored by early evening.

Police were investigating the cause of the fault.

- NZPA