Nearly 1,800 land phone users in Gaibandha suffer for more than a month as the BTCL office in the district fails to restore land phone lines which went dead due to a problem with the software.
Gaibandha BTCL sources said all the connections provided by the company went dead for the first time on September 5 this year. Engineers from Dhaka office replaced the main hard disk drive at the telephone exchange on September 15, but it went kaput again on September 22.
According to BTCL sources, the analogue telephone exchange was upgraded to a digital one in 2002. The telephone exchange has capacity to provide 2,300 connections, though currently 1,800 subscribers use BTCL lines.
Upazila Election Officer Shahinur Alam said the land phone at the office is lying dead for more than a moth. Office works were hampered for the nonfunctioning land phones, he added.
Assistant Director of Gaibandha Fire Service and Civil Defence Md Kobad Ali said public could not contact them in cases of emergency. Other government offices were facing the same problem, said Kobad Ali.
Mahmudul Gani Rizon, a local subscriber, said he could not contact his relatives who live abroad, as the main means of communication with them was the land phone. He has no other way of communication with them as the all the land phone connections in the district were inactive, he added.
Assistant Director of Gaibandha BTCL Kofil Uddin said all the land phone connections provided by the exchange were dead because of a software problem.
The connections could not be restored until a new hard disk drive, which needs to be imported from China, is installed, said the assistant director.
