M1 hotline accidentally diverted to Police hotline

ALL content used in this not-for-profit blog remain the property of their respective owners.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/m1-hotline-routed-to/1420486.html

Local telco M1’s 1627 hotline was routed to the Singapore Police Force (SPF) hotline for a period of time on Friday (Oct 17) afternoon due to a flawed configuration file, the telco said.

M1 said about 150 customer calls were diverted to the SPF hotline.

An M1 spokesperson said in a statement: "Our investigation showed that during preparation works to support 4G voice’s (Voice-over-LTE) emergency call feature, a flawed configuration file incorrectly translated our hotline numbers to the universally accepted emergency number 112 which is automatically translated to each territory’s local emergency number. In the case of Singapore, this number is 999, the Police’s hotline."

The telco said only mobile users who accessed the Internet with their handsets at around 12.00pm to 1:30pm.

The issue was resolved by 1:30pm, according to M1, which also apologised to the Singapore Police Force and its customers for the inconvenience caused. It also alerted consumers that handsets that downloaded the file in question "may experience this same issue until the handset is turned off and on, which will refresh the configuration file".

"We encourage all customers who were in the above locations during this timeframe to take this action, as to avoid undue inconvenience to the police’s emergency hotline," the spokesperson said.

The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) said it is investigating the issue. In a statement, a spokesman said M1 had reported the technical fault to IDA, adding that it understands the issue has been resolved and noting that M1 has "advised all their customers to reboot their phones when possible".