Respite as BSNL restores Kurseong Internet

SNS, Kurseong, 11 May 2014:The poor broadband internet service in Kurseong town and surrounding areas that had started getting into people’s nerves got better today.

Though BSNL officials said they had been putting in their best efforts, residents here said the internet connectivity was dead slow for the past several days and had been getting worse.

“The service had been deteriorating by the day and the connection was intermittent. This had not only affected internet-related businesses but had also hit the daily-work of various government offices in the region,” a local said.

The Kurseong Telephone Exchange Junior Telephone Officer (JTO), Abhijit Bhaumik, said the work being carried out by the tourism department on widening the Pankhabari Road had damaged BSNL’s optical fibre cables there, thus affecting internet connectivity. “We tried repairing the cables several times by mending and joining them wherever they had been broken, but the road work is ongoing, so is the damage,” Mr Bhaumik said.

He, however, claimed that the problems are “almost solved” now as they have installed a new overhead cable along a 4-km stretch on the Pankhabari Road. He added that internet is back in Kurseong areas from today.

He said his office had earlier requested senior officials in Darjeeling to provide internet service to the Kurseong region through the ‘micro-wave’ system. The system is installed in Darjeeling as a stand-by internet service. He said whatever little connectivity Kurseong has been getting in the past few days was through this system. According to him, the service can be affected in bad weather conditions, like lightning and cloudy skies.