India Broadband Forum

Rameshjeee

Fire at BSNL office, 70K lines down
Over 70,000 landlines and 10,000 broadband connections including those, reportedly, at chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's Palm Avenue
residence tripped after a fire broke out at a BSNL office on Hungerford Street around 10 pm on Tuesday. Though five fire tenders managed to bring the situation under control in two hours, the thick smoke triggered panic in the area.

According to police, the BSNL mother station at 10/2 Hungerford Street seemed to have caught fire after an electrical fault. Apart from the landlines and broadband connections, 3,000 leased lines and 55 RSUS (Remote Satellite Exchange) connected by DLC (Digital Loop Carrier) were affected. BSNL sources said that 55 other exchanges fall under the mother station. All of them have been affected. "The lines at the CM's residence will need repairs," said a BSNL official.

"No BSNL official informed us about the incident, leading to delay. We got a phone call from a local resident and rushed there," said an official of the fire department. DC (South) Rajesh Subarno and other Kolkata police officers went to the spot to probe the case.

BSNL may take two weeks to be back online
At least 64,500 phone lines and 12,000 broadband connections have gone dead in the heart of the city following the fire at BSNL's Circus
exchange on Hungerford Street on Tuesday night.

Worse, it may take BSNL nearly a fortnight to restore all the connections. The sphere of disruption touches Park Street in the north; AJC Bose Road, Bondel Road and Picnic Garden in the south; EM Bypass in the east and Jawaharlal Nehru Road in the west

Calcutta Telephones chief general manager S K Chakra-varti said critical lines like hospitals and banks would be restored in 24-36 hours, followed by major corporate networks within a week. However, it could take 12-14 days for the entire network to go online. In the meantime, BSNL has provided wireless telephone connections to key subscribers like chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and police commissioner Gautam Mohan Chakrabarti.

With the Camac Street-Park Street-Shakespeare Sarani commercial hub located smack in the middle of the affected zone, businesses are taking a battering, with losses pegged in excess of Rs 5 crore a day.

Altogether, 52 ATMs and several hundred credit card swipe machines went blank, crippling transactions at travel houses, hotels, restaurants and other retail establishments. Several hospitals including National Medical College & Hospital, Chittaranjan Cancer Hospital, Sambhunath Pandit and Belle Vue were hit.

The exchange that is the nucleus of CalTel's commercial activity, handles 4 lakh voice calls and 1 tera byte (1,000 giga bytes) data daily that results in annual revenue earning of Rs 116 crore for the telecom company. In revenue terms, it is the largest of the 24 mother exchanges that BSNL has in the city.

Among the interim measures rolled out by BSNL include free voice and data services at Telephone Bhavan, Ballygunge Place and the Entally phone exchange from 10 am to 10 pm for affected customers and a discount of Rs 100 from the next telephone bill.

Tuesday's fire at BSNL's Circus exchange on Hungerford Street has damaged equipment worth Rs 1 crore besides disrupting 64,500 telephone lines, 12,000 broadband lines, 57 switching nodes and 60 high value business establishments connected by ISDN primary route access.

A forensic team inspected the site on Wednesday morning and ruled out sabotage, pinning the blame on a short circuit. Ironically, it is not the fire but the water sprayed by fire fighters that caused such damage to equipment at the exchange.

A similar fire-fighting exercise during a fire at the CalTel headquarters two years ago had also resulted in such damage.

"Fighting a fire in a bazaar is very different from that in a telecom office. The priority of the fire brigade is to put out the flames. Since they use conventional means, it leads to extensive damage. If we can set up a team that specialises in fires in an electronic environment, it can contain the damage," Caltel chief general manager S K Chakravarti said.

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superprash2003

That will surely take along time to fix.. if bsnl says 2 weeks , then probably 1 month!!

newprouser

you are very optimistic

panchabhut

given that its Kolkata, I'd say normalcy in 2 months

meetdilip

It will be a wonder if they keep their schedule.