The Bermuda Police and Fire Services will be meeting with the Bermuda Telephone Company to ensure problems like last Friday night?s phone service outage ? which affected even calls to the emergency 911 number ? will not happen again.

BTC reported a circuit breaker switch malfunctioned around 8 p.m. on Friday night, causing interruption to landline and DSL service in the City of Hamilton as well as the Eastern parishes.

Data lines, such as ATM machines and IT circuits to major businesses, were also impacted in the West End if those data circuits went though or terminated at the Hamilton exchange building.

Fortunately, not all data lines go through Hamilton. Businesses which are still experiencing phone problems are asked to contact 611.

Cell phone service was interrupted Island-wide for Mobility Ltd. and AT&T Wireless, though Cellular One customers were able to call each other.

With 911 down, emergency calls had to be re-routed through the hospital, and Police spokesperson Dwayne Caines appeared on television to give an alternate number to dial in case of an emergency.

Restaurants and bars experienced trouble with credit cards, though some had back-up systems which took imprints of cards to use once the system was up and running again.

Any businesses which lost money over unresolved credit card problems are asked to contact the Police to lodge a formal complaint.

?There is going to be a full post-mortem in the near future,? Mr. Caines said. ?Police, Fire and BTC will sit down and assess what took place and what mechanisms we can put in place to ensure that won?t happen again.?

BTC spokesperson Ona Fletcher added: ?Customers should be reassured that steps are being taken to avoid any reoccurrence of this situation in the future.?