Campbell Bay, Sept 23: Great Nicobar has been in a communication coma since September 20, and the silence is deafening—not just because Airtel and BSNL towers are dead, but because the government-backed communication lifeline has collapsed without a backup plan, exposing the failure of the very agencies that once promised digital connectivity as a right and not a privilege.
A suspected fault in the undersea optical fiber cable has plunged Great Nicobar and its neighbouring islands into a total blackout, cutting mobile networks, broadband, and financial transactions in one stroke. Residents are left scrambling for cash in long queues outside the only cooperative bank still able to function in offline mode.
The Department of Telecommunications and BSNL remain silent, offering no answers and no timelines. On the ground, the reality is brutal—UPI payments don’t work, ATMs are dead, government employees cannot reach their families, and ordinary citizens are cut off from the mainland with no way to even make a call.
This was the same CANI cable project that the Centre hailed as a game-changer in 2020, promising fast and reliable internet for the islands. Yet, five years on, one fault has exposed its fragility and the complete absence of contingency planning—as if a whole population of taxpayers could simply be switched off at will.
The few copper-line connections limping on satellite bandwidth are a cruel reminder that while technology exists to keep the islands connected, the will to invest in redundancy and repair ships does not. Airtel, with over 3,000 subscribers, has offered no visible initiative. BSNL’s FTTH lines serving more than 700 customers remain dead. The restoration effort so far has been a farce, with a temporary 2G signal sputtering for barely half an hour before vanishing again.
Sources now warn repairs could take months, requiring specialized ships and equipment. But what rankles most is the silence from the very agencies mandated to keep India’s farthest frontiers connected. In the absence of communication, there is no trade, no trust, and no governance—only queues outside a bank and the sinking realization that the islands have been abandoned in the dark.
