BSNL mobiles down for 16 hours
BSNL cellphone customers from the Telugu states suffered disruption of services for about 16 hours, since Wednesday night, due to failures in the telecom circle's Intelligence Network and Out-band servers.
The problem began at 10 pm on Wednesday. Customers had to put up with crossed lines, signal disturbance and unclear voice connection. The problem continued till Thursday morning.
The technical problem in the Intelligence Network’s Home Location Register (IN-HLR) and, later, problems in the Out-band server, meant customers were unable to make calls to other networks till 2 pm on Thursday.
Official sources said that lack of optimisation of servers and maintenance in the circle office caused the problems in both the In and Out-band server.
“The staff under concerned DGM and DE can optimise the servers by the simple method of logging into the admin panel and selecting ‘optimisation’ option. This should be done at least once a week. But for months, no optimisation was done,” the source said.
BSNL has 1.1 crore Cellone mobile customers in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. “The TS and AP circles together have a revenue of at least two crore per day through Cellone. Due to the problems in the network for about 16 hours, the losses to the corporation will be at least `1 crore,” the source said.
Chief General Manager of BSNL L Anataram told this newspaper that engineers have been working to rectify the problem since Thursday morning and the situation was normal by this afternoon. “We are verifying the reasons for the failures in IN and Out-band,” he said. Cyberabad police arrested a sevenmember gang which was stealing vehicles and selling them. Police also seized goods worth `1.5 crore from them. The suspects are Syed Iqbal, K. Narsimha, B. Venkatesh, Syed Khaja Pasha, Ramesh Kumar Maniar, Mohammed Zameer and Mohammed Abdul.
Cyberabad joint CP Shahnawaz Qasim said the gang stole parked lorries. The stolen vehicles were brought to a farmhouse in Thondupally from where the gang used to operate. The place was covered with huge asbestos sheets and signboards to dupe the police.
The kingpin, Mohammad Abdul Raheem alias Hassan, who also owns the farmhouse is absconding. “He purchased the farmhouse. The engines and other parts were sold in neighbouring states," the joint CP said.