The Dunedin City Council's general inquiries telephone line, and some direct dial lines, failed for about two hours yesterday.
A hardware component faultcaused problems between 8am and 10am, council network services manager Tim Oaks said.
Calls were redirected to the council's after-hours service and as there was a back-up system, the problem was only "a partial failure", with calls to other council sites such as Moana Pool, the Dunedin Public Library and the visitor centre unaffected.
Staff would work with the equipment vendor to replace the failed component, and no additional costs were incurred. Customer services agency manager Adrian Blair said the resulting backlog of calls caused some inconvenience for customers, but staff were able to catch up quickly.
Mr Oaks said late yesterday he understood a problem in the afternoon with the Port Chalmers Library phone line was not related to the earlier fault.
