A few million Idea mobile customers faced connectivity problems for a few hours in entire Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as the telecom service technical staff were trying to restore servifes in the North Coastal Andhra Pradesh districts, which were ravaged by Cyclone HudHud.
From around 10.30 a.m. on Saturday, there were connectivity issues and inexplicable call drops experienced by customers. They were assured by idea cellular customer care that connectivity would be restored shortly. Services were restored to some extent by evening.
When contacted, Idea's Chief Operating Officer Ramakrishna said the problem arose in the process of restoring total services in the HudHud-affected districts of Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram, Srikakulam and East Godavari and not because of any major issue.
He said that of the total of 1,210 cell sites in the four districts, 606 were affected by the cyclone. But according to the latest statistics, 188 were down, including 150, 10 and 28 in Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam districts.
Asked about the problem that cropped up on Saturday, Mr. Ramakrishna said it was because they were setting things right, one by one. “It’s not as if the entire system is down. When we have to repair, restore and connect to the grid, a half-a-dozen sites that are down, we need to shut down that particular stretch. Once the repairs are done, we start them again,” he said.
“Our systems were down for a while and when we were setting them up, we faced problems with some sectors tripping, down the line. We are doing our best to streamline them all,” Mr. Ramakrishna explained.
