HONOLULU -- A software problem knocked out telephones at City Hall and other city buildings for a few hours Wednesday night.

City officials said the outage began at about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday. Phone and Internet service was fully restored by 9:30 p.m.

City information technology director Courtney Harrington said Verizon suffered from "software corruption," and dispatched five technicians to fix the problem.

He said emergency communications were not affected and the city didn't lose any computer data.

Non-emergency lines at the fire department's dispatch center were knocked out, but firefighters used their radio system and cell phones to communicate.