Hardware failure disconnects CallPlus users

3.55pm - By PETER GRIFFIN

Making long-distance calls on the cheap was out of the question for many customers of CallPlus today as the toll call operator experienced a major hardware failure.

A fault on the CallPlus network affected both inbound and outbound calls for thousands of customers.

"We had a hardware failure on one of our interconnect interfaces with Telecom this morning," said CallPlus boss Malcolm Dick.

"The service was restored to about a 75 per cent level within 45 minutes of this outage but we still have some problems which mean about one in four calls don't connect for some of our customers," Dick added.

CallPlus had decided to undertake repairs after business hours tonight as a full outage in one of the company's interconnect switches would otherwise be necessary.

The spotlight fell on second-tier toll call operators this month as Telecom hatched a marketing plan to win back toll call customers who had defected to smaller rivals. Offering a 25 per cent discount off calling for six months, Telecom later admitted it was offering existing customers the same deals.

But confusion among Telecom's call centre staff led to mixed messages being sent to customers who swamped customer service lines with demands for the discount in one of the worst PR bungles for Telecom in years.

While the large telcos claim better quality of service and the advantage of including all services on one bill, internet protocol networking has increased the reliability of the smaller networks who now send much of their voice traffic over IP networks.