Heavy Rains disrupt BSNL's servies in Goa

Heavy rains have badly affected the rail, air traffic and mobile services in Goa. Over seven lakh landline phones of the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) were snapped.

"Due to heavy rainfall telephone facilities has become faulty in some part of the state, but the rural area has been affected badly," said A Desarkar, general manager, BSNL.

The BSNL mobile service has also been affected as there was no network due to rains. Around two lakh mobile subscribers suffered because of this condition. "It's not only BSNL, other cellular phone subscribers also faced the network problem," Desarkar said.

He added that the BSNL personnel are on their toes to resume telephone and mobile phone services. "We would try to solve and restore the services in couple of days." he said.

Desarkar said that their fibre optical cable, which provides Internet connectivity, has been washed away and subscribers, especially the cyber cafes and other business establishments, are facing problems.

BSNL, at present has more than 25,000 Internet subscribers in Goa. According to sources, BSNL's call centre was flooded with complaints.

All the flights to Mumbai have been suspended, since Mumbai airport was water logged. Flights to other destinations-Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai are in operations, an airport official said.

The train services have been cancelled due to landslides on the Konkan route. Some of the rail tracks have been submerged under the water.

"Most of the tracks are under water and at some places tracks have been washed away," says Bagan Ghatge, PRO Konkan Railway.

The Meteorological Department forecasted heavy rainfall with gusty winds for Goa and Maharashtra. The weather bureau has also warned the fishermen not to venture into the sea.