Mobile networks get jammed in Hyderabad

Hyderabad: Lakhs of mobile users in the city experienced interruption in service while sending New Year’s greetings over SMS and WhatsApp on Friday. Although it was off-peak hours for mobile operators, all networks were jammed due to the increase in usage of both mobile network and mobile data for about three hours (between 11 pm of December 31 and 2 am of January 1).

 

Telecom Advisory Committee member J. Nagaraju said that there were 1.2 crore mobile users in Greater Hyderabad limits of whom 30 lakh were regular data users. “On December 31, due to the over-usage of mobile data, the Intelligence Network (IN) junction of South India located in Tamil Nadu ran slow for two hours and the impact was felt by mobile data users,” he said.

 

He said that as per preliminary statistics, 60 lakh users of all the mobile networks utilised data services against the 30 lakh regular users. “Apart from mobile data, the overload had an impact on satellite and cable-based internet connections too,” he said.

 

The BSNL DGM for SMS Exchange (SMSE) said that after introduction of apps related to free SMS services, the burden on the messaging exchange located at Kerala had been reduced and there weren’t any interruptions experienced in the SMS services.

 

Meanwhile software engineer from Madhapur, R. Shyam Kumar, said that he had sim cards of three mobile operators including BSNL and none of them worked between 11pm and 5am. “I made complaints with customer service centers of all the three networks and was surprised that even there I got ‘network busy’ messages,” he said.

 

Software professional S. Vijay Krishna from Gachibowli said that a friend of his from Vizag had sent an emergency message on December 31 after failing to make phone calls due to the busy network, but he received it only at 7am on January 1.

 

WhatsApp too suffered a significant downtime of three to four hours, throwing many New Year’s Eve plans in disarray. However, WhatsApp clarified that service of only a portion of users was interrupted.