Chennai: Vardah impacts undersea network cables, hits telecom services

With Cyclone Vardah disrupting telecommunication services, operators today said they are working on a war footing to restore full connectivity in the storm-hit districts of Tamil Nadu.

A host of services, including electricity supply, mobile, telephone and mobile-Internet connectivity were disrupted as the cyclonic storm made landfall on Monday. Telecom companies said they are working to restore services in the affected districts of Chennai, Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur.

"Cyclone Vardah, which paralysed Chennai and nearby areas, caused disruptions to some of our services. Our ground teams are working on a war footing to restore services in the shortest possible time," Vodafone India's Tamil Nadu Business Head S Murali said.

Informing that services were back to normal in some areas, he claimed, "Voice and data services in some areas are being progressively restored and should be soon back to normal."

"We are rapidly getting the network back in place," Murali said, adding the company's 21 outlets in Chennai are operating and offering support to the customers. Telecom major Bharti Airtel in a communication said the cyclone impacted the company's undersea network cables, affecting the speed of the Internet.

"We deeply regret the inconvenience. Our engineers are working to resolve the issue and services will be normalised shortly," the company said. Telecom operator Aircel tweeted, "The company's network services were down due to the damage caused by Cyclone Vardah. Our team is working to restore the network. It will be restored soon."

Yesterday, the state government had asked telecom companies to restore their "full network" at the earliest. "All telecom companies are told to restore their full network as quickly as possible and it is being monitored," State Disaster Management Agency had said in a tweet.