Hyderabad: There seems to be no respite in sight for Hyderabad’s residents, from the ongoing internet outage haunting them for about three weeks now. While it started with a brief disruption in Aug as the state electricity dept took up the task of removing unauthorised and low-hanging cables—following about a dozen electrocution deaths in the city—the issue has now dragged on for over 20 days.And even as officials say that the work will be completed soon, thousands of broadband users across areas like Yakutpura, Madhapur, Begumpet, Uppal, and Gachibowli among others are fuming over the crisis. Especially affected are professionals working from home and students attending online classes. The unavailability of the “basic amenity,” they say, has seriously disrupted their routines.”My network has been down for the last 30 days. Since I usually work from home the outage has made life very difficult,” said Monish Kumar, an IT employee from Uppal. He added: “I was initially relying on mobile data, but now I’m forced to drive to office for work and deal with the traffic.” Some flustered consumers also complained about internet providers demanding the entire month’s bill, despite services being shut. “I was asked to pay Rs 799 for August despite the network not working for nearly 10 days. Negotiations did not work, and I had to cough up the money. It’s not just my work that got affected but even my leisurely activities — like watching a movie — took a hit,” said P Krishna Kumar, an IT employee living in Begumpet.Dozens of users took to social media to vent their angst. They demanded accountability both from the govt as well as internet providers. “Are you going to take responsibility for cutting down the internet lines erratically when it could have been done in a much more systematic way, by mitigating effects on people? Hyderabad is in 2025, but our internet is in 1995. It has been more than 24 hours of no WiFi in Hyderabad,” of the X-users posted. Residents also highlighted how they are receiving assurances every day from internet providers claiming that the services will be restored within a day, but there’s been no such luck yet. Expanding team to speed up work: TSSPDCLWhen contacted Musharraf Ali Faruqui, chief managing director of Telangana State Southern Power Distribution Company Limited (TSSPDCL) said that work is on in full swing and the team too will be expanded soon to speed up work further. He added that the dept held a discussion with both cable operators and Internet Service Providers (ISP) on Thursday and came to an agreement about working jointly on the issue. Faruqui, however, refrained from setting a timeline for the completion of the work.”If operators simply followed rules of maintaining height and clearing unused wires, these issues would not have arisen. While they were not cooperating so far, they have come up a proposal now and even agreed to provide their technicians for fixing the loose cables along with power officials,” said Faruqui. He added: ” Presently, we have 350 workers, including 100 power dept staff, on the ground. But a team of 1,000 people is required to ensure swift completion of fixing around 25,000 km of cable lines.”This drive is affecting all broadband customers, office-goers and hampering important services such as hospitals, bank, UPI transactions, educational institutions and others. It is now also affecting the mobile connectivity due to rampant cutting. Around 60 lakh customers of three major operators, have been affected. For local internet operators, around 10 lakh to 15 lakh customers have been hit. The Indian Telecom Act mandates that telecom service is an essential service – a lifeline. Who is going to take the ownership for this? said an official from telecom industry.
