Sealdah station, NSC Bose Int’l airport hit by technical snag

Various essential services including flight operations at the Kolkata airport, railway booking system at Sealdah station and ATM facilities were affected on Thursday after six telephone towers stopped working due to some technical snag in Telephone Bhavan.

Senior BSNL officials worked in a war footing to repair the problems. At around 7 am the NIB at the Telephone Bhavan stopped functioning due to technical glitches. BSNL provides internet services to various important offices including the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport through NIB. Air Traffic Control communicates with the aeroplanes flying within the range of 500 nautical miles from the NSCBI Airport using the BSNL internet services through the radar. The ATC gives instruction to the aeroplanes from time to time. But due to some internet connection failure ATC suffered problems. Senior ATC officials had been able to contact with the aeroplanes that were within a range of 250 nautical miles. The NSCBI Airport authority had sought the help from the Lucknow airport. According to an airport official the ATC at Lucknow Aiport had provided help to the Kolkata airport in the time of crisis. Though the BSNL officials put up an effort and repaired the glitches within two hours. The situation later became normal.

There was a link failure at Sealdah station as there was a long queue in front of the ticket booking counters. There was a link failure in many other stations in Sealdah division. 

The ATMs using BSNL connection did not function. People who wanted to withdraw money were unable to do so as there was no links in the ATMs. The incident had however no impact on the broadband consumers.