Mobile network, internet disrupted around Golapbagh

Mobile phone networks and the internet continue to disrupt all the day in and around the capital’s Golapbagh area where the BNP held its Dhaka Divisional rally on Saturday.

Several media workers covering the event said their professional activities got hampers for disruption in both voice call and internet services.

A number of journalists said both mobile and broadband internet was kept disrupted since around 9:00am and there was no internet connection in the afternoon. Besides, there were frequent call drops or no network when they tried to make phone calls. The mobile operators admitted the disruption in the locality but none of the officials agreed to speak on the record.

They said the prevalence of more mobile phones than the network capacity in an area causes such disruption.

An official of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission said that internet speed might have dropped slightly due to the large gathering. “But we do not know why the internet is slow or the mobile network is not available,” he said.

Posts and Telecommunications Minister Mustafa Jabbar told UNB, “I have no idea about it. Perhaps the network might be disrupted as many people have gathered there. It has happened earlier too.”

Emdadul Haque, president of the Internet Service Providers Association of Bangladesh (ISPAB), said they did not get any instruction to stop or reduce the speed of internet services centrally. “We do not know whether any such instructions were made to local ISPs.”