3 News.co.nz, 2 August, 2012  

Groups representing older people are hoping publicity ahead of the closure of Telecom's CDMA mobile phone network on Tuesday has done the trick and people are equipped to make emergency calls.

Telecom is refusing to say how many customers still use CDMA phones but at the end of 2011 there were 639,000.Telecom customers with the phones will not be able to make calls, send texts, or dial 111 from today.

A Grey Power spokeswoman said it would take a couple of days to know whether there was going to be a problem. The lobby group for the elderly had not received many calls about the issue ahead of the closure.

Age Concern National President Evelyn Weir urged older people who use cell phones to make sure their phones are not on the CDMA network. They could do this by taking the phone into a Telecom store or calling 123 from any landline. Mrs Weir said many older people owned cell phones for use in a case of emergency, and the older phones would not be able to be used to dial 111.

A Telecom spokeswoman told NZ Newswire last week that there had been an increase in the number of CDMA phone users going into Telecom stores during the past few weeks. "We're confident that there is good awareness of the network closure," she said.

Telecom announced the closure of the CDMA network more than a year ago.