LIHUE —The Kauai Police Department’s 911 line malfunctioned for about an hour and a half Wednesday morning. The problem was resolved by 10:30 a.m. Emergency calls went through police dispatch, instead. Honolulu Police Department and KPD’s dispatch centers are connected,
LIHUE —The Kauai Police Department’s 911 line malfunctioned for about an hour and a half Wednesday morning.
The problem was resolved by 10:30 a.m. Emergency calls went through police dispatch, instead.
Honolulu Police Department and KPD’s dispatch centers are connected, as all 911 calls go through a main switchboard in Honolulu, said county spokeswoman Sarah Blane.
During the disruption period, some voice calls, including 911 calls, did not go through and callers may have heard a fast busy or an “all circuits are busy” message,” said Hawaiian Telcom spokeswoman Ann Nishida Fry.
“It’s not necessarily that 911 is down, but it’s a voice completion issue,” Nishida Fry said. “Sometimes the calls wouldn’t go through. If you called once and then called again you might get through this time.”
Blane said police were not aware of any significant events that occurred as a result of the service disruption.
Nishida Fry said Hawaiian Telcom, which has about 300,000 access lines statewide — a combination of residential and business lines — had about 250 customers report they had experienced intermittent issues with their phone calls. She said it’s hard to tell how many customers total were impacted.
Hawaiian Telcom said it experienced intermittent impact to voice calls statewide from 6 to 9 a.m. Wednesday. About 9:45 a.m., Hawaiian Telcom implemented a routing solution that reduced the volume of voice calls impacted.
Hawaiian Telcom resolved the issue by 3:30 p.m. stating the cause was determined to be a problem with call routing equipment, which allowed only some voice calls to complete.
