Is anyone having problems with landline connections?

Someone I know has basically been told they won't have a landline service for at least a week (I'm guessing more), since the local exchange basically has no free ports left. It's a reasonably populated suburban area (Lower Hutt).
Their existing port died (pair issue?), and there is no spare capacity left to connect them.

Apparently the next door neighbour came across the same problem, however, in that instance they were lucky enough to have an available/spare port to use.

Basically, I was told they'd have to wait until the "line" was fixed - which could be ages, considering the seemingly non-trivial nature of the issue.

From the brief discussion with the TC person, this issue may start to affect more people (serviced by the same exchange).

I didn't think TC's switches would be that old (?), or in need of a re-haul (capacity upgrade or maintenance). Did they buy cheap ones or something?

Does anyone know what the legal requirements for a Telco are in regards to servicing an area? Especially with respect to emergency services access.