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Home > Business > PTI > Report

Cell services remain disrupted

January 18, 2003 18:51 IST

Telecom services, cell-to-fixed line phones and vice versa remained crippled for the second day on Saturday even as cell operators shot off letters to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and state-owned MTNL in an effort to restore services and end the woes of Delhiites.

Harit Nagpal, head (marketing) of Hutchison-Essar, said: "There is no change in the situation. No connectivity with Mahanagar Telecom Nigam Ltd and it is causing loss of revenue as well as inconvenience to customers on both sides."

This situation had arisen on Friday when MTNL was accused of blocking calls of two cellular operators -- AirTel and Hutch-- in retaliation for their refusal to allow basic operators to route their WLL calls through MTNL network.

Even the third operator Idea, which remained unaffected on Friday, on Saturday complained partial disruption in services in their network as calls from fixed line to cellular phone and vice versa could not be completed.

Terming the situation as 'alarming,' Nagpal said more surprising and strange was that no MTNL official was contactable despite repeated attempts.

Sunil Mittal-owned Bharti Group also said that problem of not getting through MTNL lines persisted today and said it was causing hardship to their subscribers.

"The last update we got was that 50 per cent of calls were not going through," Anil Nayyar of AirTel said.

MTNL top brass, including CMD Narinder Sharma and Delhi chief general manager K H Khan, could not be contacted since morning.

Even the cellular operators said that they were trying to contact senior MTNL officials, but without success.

In its letter to MTNL, Bharti Group said: "They have multiple points of interconnection to carry traffic between MTNL and Bharti, however, for last three days the company has been receiving numerous complaints from their subscribers of not getting through their calls."

The letter has been addressed to K H Khan, chief general manager, MTNL (Delhi).

Bharti officials also said that they tried to contact senior management of MTNL, technical staff but could not get through.

Similar letters have been written by other operators, Hutch and Idea to MTNL for ensuring immediate restoration of services.

The operators admitted that they have written to TRAI too but did not divulge details.
© Copyright 2003 PTI. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of PTI content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent.



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