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Posted on Wed, Oct 24, 2012 : 11:07 a.m.

Non-emergency phone service out at City of Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County offices

By Cindy Heflin

Update: Phone service had been restored as of 2:04 p.m., said City of Ann Arbor spokeswoman Lisa Wondrash.

Non-emergency phone service at City of Ann Arbor offices was down Wednesday morning. Employees could not make calls in or out.

Washtenaw County offices were also experiencing phone problems, according to a message on the county's website. The outage affected non-emergency service at the Washtenaw County metro dispatch center, which handles dispatching of emergency service for Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County and Ypsilanti. Emergency service was not affected.

The outage, which started about 9 a.m., according to the City of Ann Arbor, was affecting customers of the vendor Windstream in several states, a woman who answered the phone at a company call center said. The company did not have an estimate about when service would be restored.

The Detroit Free reported that phones were also out at Oakland County offices, the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office and the Rochester Community Schools.

In West Michigan, police in the Grand Rapids suburb of Wyoming reported problems with incoming and outgoing calls. MLive.com reports 911 service was working, according to the Associated Press. Phone problems also were reported in Midland and St. Clair counties.

Ann Arbor residents who need to contact the city while the phone service is out were advised to reach the Customer Service Center via email at customerservice@a2gov.org or the City Clerk's Office at cityclerk@a2gov.org. Washtenaw County metro dispatch can be reached by calling 734 994 2911.

Comments

Youwhine

Wed, Oct 24, 2012 : 6:38 p.m.

It would be interesting to see how often the phone service has been out, in some capacity or another, for the City of Ann Arbor ever since they went to this VOIP phone system in order to save money. Aside from having to change nearly every city telephone number, the frequent outages and downtime for system upgrades, don't make the savings look all that desirable.