Load-shedding caused service interruption: Ncell

KATHMANDU, DEC 05 -

Ncell has said its services were interrupted on Saturday due to the load-shedding imposed on its data centre by the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) ‘without prior notification’. Voice, SMS and data services were disturbed for nearly two hours on Saturday evening leaving customers out of service.

In its clarification to the Nepal Telecommuni-cations Authority (NTA), the company said the services were interrupted from 6:55 pm to 20:35 pm as a diesel generator set up for power backup at Ekantakuna could not support the system for a long time. On Sunday, NTA had sought clarification over the service interruption from Ncell.

The company has also demanded that NTA ask NEA to provide dedicated feeder lines to its data and switching centres for uninterrupted communication service, an essential service recognised by the government.

NTA officials said all telecom service providers must maintain powerful power back up system to ensure continual service. NEA started imposing load-shedding from Saturday, according to Ncell. Earlier, the electricity authority had been providing dedicated electricity lines to the data centre.

“We had not used our back up set up at the centre for the last one and half year, as there used to be dedicated power line,” said Ncell Legal Director Kamal Khanal. He said it took some time to fix the problem as technical staff was on weekly leave.

Source: The Kathmandu Post