The Hindu : New Delhi News : Connectivity problems for MTNL mobile phones

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 26, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

Connectivity problems for MTNL mobile phones

Staff Reporter

`Sabotage by ex-employees not ruled out'

NEW DELHI: Over 5.5-lakh Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) mobile subscribers faced the problem of connectivity for almost four hours on Monday after a major snag occurred at the Tis Hazari exchange, controlling its entire mobile operations in Delhi. Though the matter was being investigated, senior MTNL officials said that it might be an act of sabotage by erstwhile MTNL employees who were recently reverted to their parent cadre - the Central Department of Telecommunications (DoT).

According to MTNL (Delhi) Executive Director A.K. Arora: "Around 9-30 a.m., a major control problem was detected in a mobile switch at the Tis Hazari exchange, badly affecting the network and making all MTNL mobiles non-functional.

Immediately, senior engineers were pressed into action and by 11-30 a.m. the system was partially restored and in another one hour, the entire snag was rectified. However, due to the backlog of calls and messages in the network and the system, the complete normalcy was restored only by 1.30 p.m."

Crucial

Stating that the entire network has been restored and mobile services were now running smoothly,

Mr. Arora said initial probe has revealed that a system file in the mobile switch that was crucial for the functioning of the entire network was deleted, which led to the unstable network.

"Further investigations are on to find out the actual source responsible for the problem. Once that is detected, a case will be filed with the police and necessary penal action initiated against guilty."

System

According to a senior MTNL official, a system file could be deleted only by those who operate the system and have passwords for running the same. "Prima facie it appears to be an act of sabotage by those who were recently discharged of their duties in the MTNL and sent back to DoT.

Though system passwords of these officials were changed by us, but there can be a possibility that some of them might be having more than one password which they could have now used to sabotage the network," he added.

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