Cyclone Roanu disrupts telecom services

The cyclone Roanu that hit Bangladesh on Saturday disrupted telecom services in the coastal areas, particularly cellular services, as many of the transmission centres of mobile operators were down due to a power crisis.

However, many subscribers got back services by yesterday evening, said AKM Morshed, chief technology officer of Robi.

Operators also took preparatory measures to minimise the expected disruption before the storm hit, officials said.

Robi, with strong coverage and majority market share in the southern region, said about a thousand of their transmission sites were off during the cyclone, of which about 300 were not restored till yesterday.

"More than ten million of our subscribers were affected at that time due to service issues, and some others for not being able to charge their devices," Morshed said.

"We took measures to face the challenge, and hopefully most of our subscribers are already live now."

Subscribers of Chittagong area were severely affected by Roanu while those from Noakhali and a greater part of Comilla region also suffered. 

Some parts of Barisal, Bhola and Cox's Bazar were also affected, and cellular services of all operators suffered due to power cuts.

A good number of Grameenphone transmission sites were also down due to the cyclone, but less than a hundred remain inoperative now as power supply has been restored, officials said. 

Grameenphone is still running another hundred transmission sites on backup battery power, it said.

Although all transmission points have backup power source, it is for temporary use and cannot survive for too long. 

The companies may need a couple of days to bring services to full normalcy in the affected areas, officials added. 

Although Banglalink has a smaller subscriber base in the affected areas in the south, its services were also hit by the cyclone.

"Because of the natural calamity in the coastal areas, a few affected places had power outages resulting in temporary network disruption for a few hours," said Asif Ahmed, head of corporate communications at Banglalink.

However, they ensured backup power supply, and the service was fully restored, Banglalink said.

Services of three other operators -- Airtel, Teletalk and Citycell -- were also affected, though their presence in the area is small.