PANJIM: If India is moving ahead as digital India, why is care not taken to ensure that proper provisions are made to provide continued internet services? Although the use of electricity poles by internet and cable providers without paying dues may have been illegal, was the rash manner in which the cables were cut, justified. Herald Media asked IT professionals and businessmen, “Poor coordination between Power Department and IT Department led to major loss of business due to cutting of cables in Goa. Do you agree?”
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It is a sad disgrace that two departments cannot coordinate among themselves regarding a fundamental infrastructure like internet connectivity. In the year 2025 when the world is digitized, the Prime Minister has been talking about digitization driving India. Two departments under a party which is the same as the Prime Minister, cannot coordinate about this fundamental matter. Is it incompetence of the ministers and bureaucrats and people involved or is it somebody’s ego playing out. Are we waiting for somebody to die due to this due to some medical situations or whatever that there is a problem and that has to be sorted out? Just like in the developed world, internet cables are put underground, they have to be provisioned with required ducting underground so that we don’t have cables hanging on the poles in the first place.
Vincent Toscano, Managing Partner Uzoorba Technologies
I feel it is the mistake of the cable operators. The electricity department had given them a warning earlier. They neither heed the warning nor make the payments. The fault is of the cable operators. They should have paid the government if they were told to pay. Now we are operating from St. Cruz. We are using BSNL, we did not have any problems. Now that EE has been removed and he had said that only cables in Panjim were cut. But how did the internet services all over Goa go down. All were complaining. How did it happen? I feel that the cable operators themselves downed the services. I feel it is the fault of the cable operators. It is not the fault of the electricity department.
Remmie Azavedo, Founder Fabcoders
We were affected due to the disruption of internet services. Those who had Jio wireless connectivity, those people had no problems. So that helped, but those who were using wire based services were having a problem. Those who had Jio wireless services started using that. People were affected, especially students, its not that people were not affected. Even business people were affected. Fortunately we had two lines. Our backup line was wireless. So it helped.
Nilesh Shah Past President, TTAG
