MARK Roberts is at his wits end - his phone keeps ringing the emergency services all on its own.

He said a fault on the line had led to 40 emergency calls going out in the last fortnight and he and his wife, Sarah, 22, of Field Avenue, Blackbird Leys, were getting fed up with it.

Mr Roberts, 52, said: "It goes from any time of the day and all through the night. We had police knocking on the door for the first week. They were slightly peeved but they don't take any notice of it now."

He is worried that he might have to use the residential line to dial fire, police or ambulance one day but he will be ignored.

Edward Jackson, who runs a petfood supply business from his home, told ComTel about the problem but the company blamed his phone. He bought another - but the calls continued.

He said: "They told me they would charge me £30 an hour to come out and solve their own problem. The police are getting fed up with it. "We can be sitting here and all of a sudden the police phone saying - have we just called them with an emergency? We've been here and police have come to the door. We've had brand new phones put in and it is still doing it. It's not the phones, it is the ComTel exchange. We've had 40 calls go to the police in the last two weeks. The first week, they had to come round all the time, now when they see it's our number they just ignore it.

"I'm getting really annoyed with it now. Something's seriously wrong."

A Thames Valley Police spokesman confirmed a large number of calls had come from Mr Jackson's address.

She said: "This problem is nothing unusual with ComTel. We get it occasionally from BT lines but, for some unknown reason, ComTel lines are particularly bad for it.

"You can't tell anyone about it until the next day and by then the problem might have sorted itself out. We can call back a number several times a day - it's a ComTel problem."

ComTel spokesman Claire Florey, said the company had renewed the external lines and was going to renew the wiring inside the housenew internal one for Mr Jackson's peace of mind. She said ComTel could find no fault with its equipment but 999 calls were definitely coming from Mr Jackson's phone.

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