Kohima, Jan. 16: The much-hyped mobile phone services in Nagaland is facing hiccups. To add to the woes, the state?s entire telecommunication sector has gone awry. While many of the cellular phone subscribers complain that their handsets do not work in the evening, the state of landline telephones is worse.
Capital Kohima has become used to landline telephone failures at least twice a week through the last month. The readymade answer for such failures is a ?snag in the microwave tower?.
On Wednesday, telephone lines suddenly went off and calls were not possible between Dimapur and Kohima. Telecommunication officials said there was a snag in the microwave tower in Kohima. The telephone exchange in district headquarters town Kiphire faces problems for most part of the year. The exchange remained closed for more than four months last year.
?Now for the last month the exchange has been facing more problems even though repairs were taken up late last year,? an employee at the Tuensang telephone exchange said over phone.
Absence of staff at the exchange and the BSNL officials? ?step-motherly attitude? are believed to be responsible for the dismal scenario in the state?s telecommunication sector.
The chief minister?s office and the community information centre (CIC) in Kohima, both of whom possess a V-Sat each, have been facing problems for the past week.
?We have not been able to access the Internet,? a CIC operator said. The chief minister?s office has also been facing the problem. These sub-stations are controlled by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) Earth Station in New Delhi. The NIC is the nodal body running the V-Sat centres. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had given the nod to cellular phone services in Nagaland a few months back.