Qwest makes clerical error after City Hall changes telephone companies

Whoever said you can’t fight City Hall must have been trying by phone.

From Thursday afternoon through late Friday morning, Medford city office’s 900 telephone lines could not receive incoming calls.

The affected buildings were City Hall, the Lausmann Annex, the maintenance shop and the water reclamation plant.

It’s not that the city forgot to pay its phone bill; Qwest forgot to cancel a disconnect order.

"Qwest experienced a clerical error," said Erin Dunn, a spokeswoman for Qwest.

City Hall staff decided in June to switch phone companies after Advanced TelCom Group neglected to upgrade the city’s system as promised by April, according to Barbara Madruga, Technology Services Department project manager.

Advanced TelCom Group filed for bankruptcy in May, and General Electric Business Productivity Solutions had taken over the city’s account.

The upgrade will provide enhanced 911 services for city offices, meaning that police dispatchers will know what room in which building employees are calling from in an emergency. As it stands now, if an employee dials 911, the address on the dispatcher’s computer screen is the generic "411 W. Eighth St."

So Medford decided to switch to Qwest, and the original switch-over date was Nov. 7, said Madruga.

The date was changed to the 19th on everything except the order to disconnect the phones.

The city reported the problem to Qwest at 4:15 p.m. Thursday.

"Outdated records caused additional delays," said Dunn, adding that the records have since been updated.

Medford building official Gary Miller looked on the bright side.

"It was certainly quiet around here," he said.

When the lines came back on at 10:45 a.m., the building department received a rush of calls, he said.

There were a couple people calling to request building inspections who complained, he said.

Overall, there didn’t seem to be more than non-emergency delays, said Madruga.

"It’s just a major inconvenience because our citizens (couldn’t) call in," she said.

Ron Trullinger, Qwest area manager, said disconnection is easy and automatic, but reconnection is more complex.

"In a disconnect, the computer software’s pretty much removed," he said. It’s easy to disconnect lines, but reconnecting takes time.

"You’ve got to go in and manually reconnect," he said, adding that Qwest’s staff had to manually re-connect each of the city’s 900 phone numbers.

He said that while he anticipates a seamless transition on the Nov. 19, he can’t guarantee it.

"We would hope that would be totally transparent to the customer," he said.

Reach reporter Meg Landers at 776-4481 or e-mail mlanders@mailtribune.com.