Tamil Nadu - Chennai   

Fire downs Touchtel, Airtel networks

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, SEPT. 15. The Airtel mobile and Touchtel landline networks were down this evening following a fire at the headquarters of Bharti Telecom here.

Fire department sources said they received a call at 8.45 p.m. about a cable fire in the Bharti Telecom office premises off Santhome High Road. It was put out in a few minutes but it shut down the entire communication network.

An official at the Airtel office, while conceding that the fire had affected the network, could not provide any details on the extent of the damage or when the services would be restored.

Subscribers who called The Hindu complained that their phones stopped working. They could neither receive or make calls or even communicate through `SMS'.

Touchtel Internet services, as also the `virtual private network' used by some companies, were also hit by the breakdown.

The operations of many companies dependent on the virtual private network and the closed user group facilities were affected.

For mobile subscribers of Chennai, such incidents are not uncommon. Some time ago, subscribers of Aircel, the closest competitor of Airtel, experienced problems making calls. Bharti Telecom's fire and network shutdown came on a day when the company announced that it would be bringing all its telecom services under one single Airtel brand. Airtel has about 2 lakh mobile phone subscribers in the city.

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