98% telecom towers in flood-hit areas restored

Telecom network in Alappuzha, Pathanamthitta, Idukki, Ernakulam, Thrissur districts were the worst-affected in the flood and landslides

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Connectivity of 98 per cent of telecom towers in flood-hit areas has been restored. The remaining 2 per cent - those falling in Kuttanad - will be restored once water recedes, said Department of Telecommunications (DoT) officers.

A review meeting chaired by Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan pegged the losses to different telecom service and infrastructure providers at Rs 350 crore.

More than 20 per cent of the state’s telecom network was affected due to floods and landslides. Alappuzha, Pathanamthitta, Idukki, Ernakulam and Thrissur districts were the worst-affected.
Restoration activities were carried out by the DoT, BSNL, telecom service and infrastructure providers in association with the state government.

The secretary asked service providers to give top priority to Kuttanad. Connectivity issues will be resolved by the end of the month, she said.

More than 400 tower sites in flood-hit areas are functioning on diesel generator support due to power outage.

168 out of 190 optical fiber cable cuts have been restored and the remaining will be restored as soon as the sites become accessible. Out of 85,900 Base Transceiver Stations (BTS), 23,552 were affected. 22,217 BTS were restored as on August 24. 131 of the affected 153 telephone exchanges have been restored.

The secretary thanked the state government for its support to service providers, including diesel supply and transportation of technicians.

LESSONS FROM KERALA

• DoT will refine its standard operating procedure (SOP) for responding to disasters considering Kerala’s experience as a best practice. Authorities have been asked to review the existing SOP and suggest improvements based on their lessons from Kerala. A national workshop involving all states and stakeholders will be held to evolve the SOP.
• DoT will upgrade the early warning facility to help State Disaster Management Authorities (SDMAs) to send alerts in vernacular languages. The Common Alert Protocol - Early Warning Platform (CAP - EWP) developed by DoT and C-DOT helped the Kerala SDMA to send out early warnings to the public through mobiles. CAP enables dissemination of messages to the target population without the intervention of service providers.
• DoT will formulate a comprehensive Public Protection and Disaster Relief procedures, which can be implemented across India involving all stakeholders.

Relief during distress
At present, location identification of missing persons is done through a standardised common number, which helps customers get the location of missing family members and friends for further tracing. This will be integrated with the common distress number like 112.