Emergency ambulance service '108' was hit for almost 24 hours in the Telugu states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, after an optical fibre cable got damaged near Hyderabad’s Outer Ring Road.
The main call center that deals with the distress calls, operates from Hyderabad for both states and receives more than 40,000 calls for day, with Telangana in possession of 316 ambulances, while Andhra Pradesh has 436, DC reported.
The call centres of GVK Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI), work from Hyderabad by using telecommunication lines provided by BSNL.
According to reports, EMRI renders its services to ‘108’ ambulance service, ‘181’ emergency services along with ‘dial 100’ services of the police.
The incident was found to have occurred due to road cutting works near Kompally in Hyderabad, which resulted in the call centre receiving only 25% of calls. Each caller either found it difficult to get through, or had to wait for five to ten minutes on the line, TOI reported.
Ashok Palle, president of Telangana 108 Employee Association told DC that the drivers of ambulances received very few calls on Monday due to the disturbance.
Hyderabad Police Commissioner Mahender Reddy told TOI that ‘100’ services were automatically re-established through another service provider, as the disruption had affected the BSNL’s services.
However, the chief operating officer of GVK EMRI services told the media that the optic fibre had snapped due to digging, abd back-up lines were insufficient to handle the large number of calls.
BSNL also said that they were able to re-establish connectivity by Monday afternoon, and also blamed road cutting work taken up by contractors, either due to Mission Bhagiratha, or for road-widening purposes, the TOI report adds.