Centre asks all telcos to activate intra-circle roaming facility in J&K
Srinagar: The phone and Internet services were restored across all networks in Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday, 24 hours after the damage to optical fibres caused outages in the Union territory, officials said.
“The phone and internet services, including mobile internet, fibre and landline internet, have been restored,” the officials said. The users can access 5G network speeds across the networks, they added.
The restoration came after optical fibre was re-connected in Jammu region.
Technical teams were put on the job immediately after the damage to fibre was reported at multiple locations amid heavy rainfall and floods in Jammu region that had led to network outage, the officials said.
The outage caused disruptions in banking services as well.
Jammu and Kashmir experienced network outages in all the service providers on Tuesday after torrential rain created havoc in most places, especially in the Jammu region.
The communication blackout impeded emergency response measures and caused panic among the residents.
In a late-night development on Tuesday, the Centre asked all the telecom service providers to immediately activate the intra-circle roaming (ICR) facility in J&K till September 2.
The directive has been passed to the regulatory heads of Bharti Airtel, BSNL, Reliance-Jio and Vodafone-ldea.
“In view of the prevailing situations due to heavy rainfall and multiple landslides in Jammu and Kashmir, and in accordance with Clause 29.6 of the unified licence and as per the provisions of SOP 2020 for responding to disasters, all telecom service providers are hereby instructed to activate the intra-circle roaming facility for the J-K Union Territory with immediate effect till 23:59 hours of September 2, or till further instructions, whichever is earlier,” the disaster management unit of the Department of Telecommunications said in its order.
It said the ICR facility will continue to be extended to all in-roamers in Jammu and Kashmir and this may be treated on top priority.
