Campbell Bay, 19 Jan 2021
The residents of Gandhi Nagar Village of Great Nicobar today sat on a dharna to press for their demand of repairing the BTS of BSNL located at Shastri Nagar Village which serves three revenue villages of Laxmi Nagar, Gandhi Nagar and Shastri Nagar. It is being reported that the Mobile Network of BSNL was not available in the three revenue villages because of a technical fault in the Shastri Nagar BTS of BSNL.
The villagers of Gandhi Nagar informed Nicobar Times that the Shastri Nagar BTS of BSNL always remains faulty, because of which the residents of all the nearby revenue villages face a lot of issues in their day to day lives.
Apart from Dharna the residents also blocked the roads at Gandhi Nagar and stopped two STS busses. The villagers however allowed the emergency and defence vehicles to move as usual. The residents since early morning were demanding immediate repair of Shastri Nagar BTS of BSNL and had made it clear to the administration that they will not remove the road blockade and continue to sit on dharna until and unless the Shastri Nagar BSNL BTS is repaired.
Later in the day the Assistant Commissioner of Campbell Bay visited Gandhi Nagar with the Junior Telecom Officer of BSNL and assured the residents that the BTS will be repaired by tomorrow. The residents explained their problems to the Assistant Commissioner and informed him that they will continue to sit on dharna until the BTS is repaired.
The Assistant Commissioner heard the issues of the residents patiently. The main concern of the residents of Gandhi Nagar were that the students of the villages are lagging behind because the schools are conducting online classes and they do not even have facilities to make voice calls.
The Junior Telecom Officer of BSNL informed the residents that the replacement for the faulty equipment for Shastri Nagar BTS of BSNL is arriving at Campbell Bay by a Navy Ship which is scheduled to reach tomorrow and the equipment will be replaced as soon as it arrives.
The residents of Gandhi Nagar continuously demanded immediate repair of the BTS and finally after hours of negotiation it was decided that the BSNL will immediately repair the BTS using the equipment from another BTS from Campbell Bay which was not operational currently because of damaged OFC.
Finally by late evening hours the Shastri Nagar BSNL BTS was restored and the Dharna and Road Blockade was called off by the residents of Gandhi Nagar. Another major concern of the residents of the region is non-availability of power backup at the Shastri Nagar BTS because of which whenever there is a power cut the BTS stops working for hours together. The JTO assured to the public that the BTS will start immediately after power restoration and expressed helplessness to solve the issue because of non-availability of any power backup at the BTS.
Shri. Sanjay Kumar Singh, State Vice President of Bharatiya Janata Party and Shri. E.S Rajesh, District President, Nicobar District of Bharatiya Janata Party were also present at Gandhi Nagar with the villagers.
BSNL is the only service provider for telecommunication services in Great Nicobar and the residents are completely dependent on BSNL for all their communication needs. During these times of COVID-19 pandemic internet and mobile connectivity has become even more essential since from the schools to colleges the classes of students are being conducted online.
BSNL is association with local cable operators have started FTTH services in Campbell Bay. FTTH will be available in Campbell Bay and nearby villages but the residents of revenue villages of Laxmi Nagar, Gandhi Nagar and Shastri Nagar will still not get the high speed broadband connections because it is clear that laying 35 Km long OFC for a few broadband connections are not economically feasible for a private cable operator.
Innovative and cost effective solutions needs to be introduced to provide internet access to these regions. Free Space Optical Communication can be utilised in such regions to provide high speed internet connectivity without deploying OFC and at a fraction of the cost. Google’s Project Taara can be referred here which has piloted in Andhra Pradesh and has connected several unconnected villages with internet using FSOC Terminals.
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