Intire-circle roaming in Himachal Pradesh urged

The government has directed telecom operators to enable intra-circle roaming in Himachal Pradesh that has been battered by heavy rains that could disrupt connectivity, industry experts said. While there has been no major damage to telecom infrastructure like towers or radios, numerous areas in the affected region were facing power outages, affecting the running of telecom towers, they said. There has been some damage to the fibre laid along the National Highway in this region, but network engineers are working to reroute that traffic, he said. In many regions, there is a major problem with the lack of grid power supply to mobile towers. Getting backup electric supply to the affected sites is also a challenge due to inaccessibility of the roads bridges which are damaged or submerged, said SP Kochhar, COAI, the industry body that represents telecom operators in India. The government has directed all four operators - BSNL, Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea - to enable intra-circle roaming. The feature makes it possible for telecom users to obtain other networks' services while in their home region in case their primary network suffers an outage.