Scores of Bradford businesses were thrown into communication chaos when a technical fault cut off their telephone lines today.

Lines including the Telegraph & Argus's own switchboard in Hall Ings went silent for more than an hour about 9am after a fault occurred at Torch Telecom's main switching centre in Leeds.

A concentrator, which is responsible for fielding calls from the Wakefield-based company's clients and redistributing them to their final destinations, developed a hardware fault.

Torch's marketing manager Jamie Watson said as the fault repaired itself a software fault also occurred leading to the shutdown on their clients' lines in Bradford and Leeds.

He said: "What happened is something that can happen to any telecommunications network. Because our network is so sophisticated there is an in-built healing process which took place.

"The time the lines were off was the time the software was building itself up to a stable state which is a process we can't intervene with.

"What I want to underscore is that our service level agreements with all our business clients is that we fix a fault within fours hours and the service was restored well within that level."

Bradford's police, fire and ambulance 999 calls were unaffected by the phone faults but the switchboard at the West Yorkshire Ambulance Service's headquarters in Birkenshaw which deals with administration calls did go down.

Bradford Royal Infirmary's switchboard was unaffected by the shutdown.

One of Torch Telecom's main clients Yorkshire Water, who have a call centre based at Buttershaw, was also unaffected.

l The Telegraph & Argus would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused by the temporary fault. Advertisers are reminded there is a direct line for their inquiries on (01274) 730000 which was unaffected.

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