A fire at a telephone exchange operated by India's Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) in Chandigarh over the weekend has significantly disrupted telecoms across the region and disconnected subscribers across Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. It is reported that it could take a couple of days to repair the damage and get telephone services back to normal.
"While the restoration of landline, mobile phone and Internet services to about 20,000 phone subscribers, connected to the Sector-17 exchange would take time, the mobile phone services at various places in North India including Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab has been restored, BSNL services," Principal General Manager of BSNL, D R Paul, told the Press Trust of India. There have been some unconfirmed reports suggesting that as many as 2 million lines have been affected by the fire.
Fire officials say that the fire broke out on the first floor of the 3-storey building and was probably caused by an electrical short-circuit. Ten BSNL staff were trapped in the building for over an hour, and were taken to hospital but later released after receiving basic first aid treatment."
Posted to the site on 2nd July 2007
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