MTNL relents, Phone services restored

NEW DELHI: Phone services in the Indian capital, disrupted over the weekend for poor connectivity between cellular and fixed-line networks, were restored on Sunday, two leading telecom firms said.

"Things are fine now. This afternoon onwards calls could be made to and from our network to a fixed-line phone," a spokesman for Bharti Tele-Ventures, the city's largest mobile phone service company, told Reuters. A spokeswoman for second-ranked Hutchison Essar Telecom Ltd, the Indian mobile unit of Hutchison Whampoa, also said that their network was working properly. Both officials said they did not know how the service had been restored. The two firms had earlier charged state-run fixed-line firm MTNL with blocking access.

Hundreds of thousands of telephone users in and around New Delhi had not been able to call between fixed and mobile phones since late on Friday as cellular and fixed-line phone companies fought over an interconnect agreement.

Cellular operators last week said they had received "threats of disconnection" from MTNL, which serves New Delhi and Bombay, and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, the state-run, fixed-line phone firm which controls the rest of India's fixed-line market.

© Reuters