M1 apologises for sending customer calls to police hotline
[UPDATE Saturday 18 October 2014, 10:16am: Added statement from M1]
M1 apologised to the Singapore police after its customer service hotline was routed to the police emergency hotline (999) on Friday.
A total of 150 customer service calls made by people located in the eastern part of the city-state and the central business district, between 12 and 1:30pm, were diverted to the police due to a "flawed configuration file".
"We sincerely apologise to the Singapore Police Force and our customers for the inconvenience caused," said the local telco in a statement released later in the evening.
M1 further explained: "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 GSM Association’s universally accepted emergency number 112. This number is automatically translated to each territory’s local emergency number. In the case of Singapore, this number is 999, the Police’s hotline."
The company also encouraged customers in the said locations to turn off and on their handsets so as to "refresh the configuration file".
