Ranchi, Oct. 1: Over 10 lakh BSNL mobile phone subscribers woke up to no or proxy signals this morning, thanks to multiple damages caused in the cellular cable lines in the capital.

Consumers in Ranchi, Khunti, Ramgarh and neighbouring areas remained "out of the network coverage" for over 12 hours in the day, with many ruing missing essential calls related to important work.

BSNL sources maintained that the problem occurred between 1am and 2am and the normalcy was restored after 3pm.

Divisional engineer (mobile operations), BSNL, Sanjay Kumar Singh said trench work for laying water pipelines and road construction led to multiple damages in optical fibres, primarily in Bariatu and Lalpur areas, tripping the network in some parts of the state.

"Optical cables in Bariatu and Lalpur are connected to our main server at the BSNL headquarters in Jumar pool near Booty More. Some trench work in these areas last night resulted in multiple damages to our optical fibres. As a result, the services in Ranchi and its adjoining districts remained affected in the first half of the day," Singh told The Telegraph.

Asked about the delay in starting the restoration work, the divisional engineer said it took them time to identify the actual fault. "When we realised in the morning that phones aren't working, we first thought it was due to some technical fault in the servers. On further probe, it was found the signals weren't available due to cable cuts. But it took us long to zero in on the actual location. Everything is fine now," he said.

"Even all our official numbers were out of range through the morning hours," Singh said, adding that landlines were working fine.

Several customers complained their work got affected due to the network glitch.

"Today was the last date for paying my insurance premium, and the mobile Internet was down," Subodh Kumar, a resident of Lalpur, said.