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Telephones go 'dead'

Telephone lines and cellular phones in Bombay went 'dead' for more than two hours on Tuesday in a majority of the electronic exchanges shortly before the appearance of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray in a city court.

Several exchanges of the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited automatically switched over to a 'degraded mode' when traffic reached beyond control, hence the lines went silent, a senior official said.

"This was not a deliberate move on our part. The exchanges degrade themselves automatically if the regular traffic rises abnormally," he explained.

Attributing the disruption to the tense situation in the city, the officer said, "Whenever such a situation arises, people panic and start making frantic calls, thus adding on to the peak hour traffic. The exchanges automatically detect the load with an internal computerised logistic technology and switch off to a degraded mode," he added.

The city has 130 electronic exchanges with a subscriber base of 2.3 million users. The lines went silent shortly before 1100 hours (IST) and were restored at around 1300 hours, he said.

Internet connectivity in the city was also affected due to a jam in the telecom system under the MTNL circuit, a Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited official said.

The disruption in the telephone services had its echo in both houses of the state legislature.

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