Fed: Telstra rejects silent number mistake report

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Fed: Telstra rejects silent number mistake report

SYDNEY, Aug 12 AAP - Telstra today rejected claims it had mistakenly published hundredsof silent numbers in the White Pages.

A report in The Daily Telegraph said a mistake in Telstra's data entry systems hadresulted in the numbers appearing in the on-line and hard copy versions of this year'sdirectory throughout Australia.

"This morning's newspaper report are simply wrong," Telstra spokesman Michael Herskope said.

"There have not been hundreds of silent lines published in error, that is simply not the case."

Mr Herskope said Telstra checks were in place to ensure customers' initial instructionswere followed.

"So whilst there might be a risk of an error we expect that as in previous years, itwould be a minute fraction of requests that are in error," he said.

"Unfortunately, error does happen here because there's human interaction involved -after all we're not robots."

The chance of an error was one in 1,000, according to Mr Herskope.

He said customers who had been the victim of an error were urged to contact the companyto have the situation rectified.

The newspaper report said some clients did not appear in the hard copy but were includedin the on-line version of the White Pages.

It quoted Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman John Pinnock as saying Telstra hadwritten to the affected customers and was trying to rectify the situation.

The silent line problem arose after Telstra gave production of the phone directoryto its subsidiary Pacific Access, which also produces the Yellow Pages, the paper said.

AAP ld/nf/cd/mo

KEYWORD: TELSTRA SILENT LEAD