TWENTY-five thousand telephone lines went down for up to two hours in the centre of York today.
A BT spokeswoman said an equipment failure happened at 10.30am at the Stonebow exchange.
The majority of the 25,000 numbers affected were business numbers, most of them numbers starting with 50 and 55.
The spokeswoman said it was hoped that all the lines would be up and running again by 12.30pm.
She said: "We apologise to customers and we are working hard to get everybody back in service as soon as possible."
* North Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service said a call to the Stonebow exchange today was a false alarm after a caller saw smoke coming from emergency generators on the roof.
Updated: 15:18 Thursday, November 01, 2001
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