Large parts of Durban were without a full telephone service when Telkom’s lines went down.
|||Durban - Large parts of Durban were without a full telephone service on Tuesday when Telkom’s service was disrupted.
A Telkom spokesman said the failure was caused by technical problems and that the service was restored at 6pm.
The eThekwini municipality had to arrange for emergency calls to be patched through to emergency services such as the fire department and metro police.
Municipal spokesman Thabo Mofokeng was on the radio and sent out press releases notifying residents to dial a Pinetown number for emergencies.
The Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry said some businesses would have suffered damage to their reputations as customers couldn’t get through to their offices.
Chamber head Andrew Layman said the service sector was worst hit.
Economist Bonke Dumisa, from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said that, thanks to 3G and other technologies, the financial impact on businesses was minimised.
“There are ways around it. We can do without them (Telkom),” Dumisa said.
Among those affected were the public protector’s regional office and the SA National Council on Alcoholism (Sanca).
Sanca’s Walter Petersen said the outpatient clinic stopped working.
“People phone to make appointments for counselling. We also get large volumes of faxes. So we are very dependent on the phones working. It certainly does affect us,” Petersen said.
*Our apologies to those who tried to phone Independent Newspapers on Tuesday. We were also affected by the Telkom fault.