Tarun Karthick
Sri Vijaya Puram, 30 September 2025
Communication services in Nancowry and Great Nicobar Islands remain severely affected for the eleventh consecutive day following a snag in the Car Nicobar–Nancowry segment of the Chennai–Andaman & Nicobar Islands (CANI) submarine optical fibre cable. The disruption, which began around 3:32 pm on September 20, has left thousands of residents and businesses struggling to stay connected.
While BSNL managed to restore mobile voice services in Nancowry within hours, subscribers in Great Nicobar endured a three-day blackout before basic voice connectivity was resumed. Some BSNL customers on older DSL broadband connections were able to access very slow internet after the service provider switched to satellite backup. However, fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) services remain down, and Airtel users in Great Nicobar are still completely offline.
Even for BSNL users, connectivity is unreliable. Frequent call drops and poor voice quality continue to frustrate residents, with no properly functional mobile data available.
According to technical sources, the fault lies in the “wet plant” of the CANI system—the undersea cable itself. Diagnostic assessments have traced the disruption to approximately 1.06 km off Car Nicobar. Tools such as Optical Time Domain Reflectometers (OTDRs) were reportedly used to pinpoint the fault, but a full repair will require specialised ships and equipment to retrieve and inspect the cable from the seabed.
The outage has had a crippling impact on daily life. With digital payments via UPI severely affected, local businesses report a sharp decline in earnings during the ongoing Durga Puja festival season—a crucial time for earnings. “This is peak festival season, but people are spending less because UPI isn’t working,” said a trader in Great Nicobar. Residents now fear continued losses if services are not restored before Diwali.
Despite the scale of the disruption, no official timeline for repairs has been communicated to the public. The lack of updates has deepened frustration among islanders, who are demanding greater transparency from authorities.
“Internet is a basic need today. People deserve to know when full services, including high-speed internet, will be restored,” said a resident.
As the outage stretches into its 11th day, calls are growing louder for the responsible agencies to expedite repair operations and keep the public informed of progress.
