Harassed by tardy maintenance of the MTNL’s transmission lines and underground cable thefts, its subscribers migrated gradually to other telecom service providers.
(Photo: iStock)
The Mahanagar Telephone network is in limbo. It has been in trauma due to an extended indeterminate state of neglect of the national capital’s basic wire-borne speech and broadband connectivity, being suffered by its multitude of subscribers since early 2019.
Harassed by tardy maintenance of the MTNL’s transmission lines and underground cable thefts, its subscribers migrated gradually to other telecom service providers.
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Some unwilling to lose their decades-old contact identity numbers are still waiting stoically. Thousands of subscribers are sitting with dead phones.
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Those sallying forth to nearest telephone exchanges witnessed dismal scenes of virtually empty office premises, with residual despondent skeletal staff waiting for the long expected ‘voluntary retirement scheme’ that finally came in February 2020.
Most telephone exchanges in the metropolis are still derelict. With rooms locked, billing and cash receipt counters closed, ‘Sanchar Hut’ outlets dispensing Dolphin 3 G Sim cards for mobiles and top-up coupons for talk time and data shut down.
The whole communication network remains severely crippled by the ‘golden handshake’ shedding of technologically-outdated personnel.
Unceremoniously left in the lurch, hapless MTNL subscribers are feeling abandoned indefinitely with no hint of a time frame for restoration of normalcy.
The still remaining officers known to be ‘holding the fort’ in the widely-separated telephone exchanges do not pick up their designated phones.
What are the MTNL’s basic wire-borne voice and broadband internet dependent clients are to do now when ‘work from home’ has become the norm?
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