The BSNL office in Ranchi

BSNL subscribers in Ranchi were greeted by pre-recorded “please try again” voice messages through the greater part of the day as they failed to get through to their loved ones due to a major technical snag in the network on Wednesday.

Telephones and Internet lines remained unresponsive for over 7 hours, beginning from 7am on Wednesday.

Sources revealed that the communication network collapsed owing to multiple failure of BSNL optical fibre links between major cities, including Patna, Jamshedpur and Dhanbad, within the Bihar-Jharkhand circle.

Subscribers had a harrowing time as they found themselves disconnected from their kith and kin. “I am unable to call my mother-in-law who stays in Hinoo. My wife is in labour and I need someone to accompany us to the nursing home,” said Rana Chakraboty, a resident of Kanke Road.

The network problem took a heavy toll on banking operations across the district. An HDFC Bank manager rued that transactions and other normal business activities had been disrupted at all their branches in the state capital.

“The link failure has hit both cash transactions and cheque clearances,” he added.

Equally harassed were stock market professionals who failed to contact their clients. “Investors who had turned up at my office got to know about the problem on their own as they were unable to make calls. They figured out there was a server problem, which is quite frequent these days,” city-based stock trader O.P. Sarawgi told The Telegraph

BSNL chief general manager D.K. Sinha conceded that there was a major fault in the network and said that a team of engineers had been pressed into action. “It is good that the snag was in my area of jurisdiction so I did not need to wait for others to take troubleshooting measures. That would have delayed the process,” he told The Telegraph. However, despite Sinha’s assurances that the network would be restored by 2pm, subscribers continued to face problems till late in the afternoon. BSNL sources clarified that troubleshooting measures were on and phone and Internet lines would be back on track by evening.