The Dhaka City Corporation (DCC)’s repair work has severed BTCL’s ‘core cable’ affecting about 900,000 landlines, including those of fire services, across the country.
“The chaos spread across the country,” Mahfuz Uddin Ahmad, managing director of Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Ltd or BTCL, said.
It may take three to four hours for the repair to be completed at Dhaka’s Moghbazar, he said, according to a bdnews24 report.
The core cable snapped during the repair work of the city corporation on Dilu Road in Moghbazar on Thursday night, said BTCL spokesman Mir Mohammad Morshed.
“We started repairing the cable in the morning. We hope things will get normal later in the day.”
Users complained of phones going dead and interrupted calls from one area to another. But some landlines in the same neighbourhood are working fine.
BTCL’s Ahmad complained that the city corporation did not take enough precautions despite letters served by the state-owned telecom company.
“The core cable is the heart of all landlines. So it has affected all sub-cables,” said one of the officials.
Brigadier General Ali Ahmed Khan, director general of Fire Service and Civil Defence, said their control room numbers went out of order suddenly on early Friday.
No-one is being able to report fire incidents. People can reach the fire service control room on 01730336699 and 01713038182, said Duty Officer Mahfuz Ripon.
Reports of telephones going dead are emerging from Mohakhali, Lalbagh, Green Road, Malibagh and Mirpur.
A BTRC official said they were supervising the BTCL activities. “The national emergency services are facing problems indeed. BTCL is trying to finish the repair quickly.”