New Orleans, Louisiana-- According to New Orleans Mayor, C. Ray Nagin, the City of New Orleans Office of Technology is testing the ability of local telephone and cellular providers to connect to the City's Information Hotline -- the 311 Call Center. In a statement by the Office of the Mayor, “the City has identified that some providers are having difficulty connecting to the 311 system. These issues are not related to the 311 system and can be resolved only by the telephone providers. For example, the Office of Technology identified an issue with the Sprint/Nextel cellular towers that span the area of the 17th Street Canal in the West End neighborhood near the Orleans-Jefferson Parish Line. Sprint/Nextel confirmed that the issue was resolved today.
If residents experience difficulty reaching the Information Hotline when dialing 3-1-1, they are advised to call the CallCenter's other numbers: 504-658-2299 or toll free from outside the 504 area code, 1-877-286-6431. Hearing impaired callers should continue to reach the center by dialing 504-658-2059 or 1-800-981-6652.”
Test Efforts made yesterday by Bayoubuzz to connect using cell phone were receiving failure signals.The system is designed to work for this year’s hurricane season.