Exchange Failure

                                         Exchange Failure

         There was a phase change after 2002. Mobile telephones entered the market and BSNL entered into the mobile competition as a state-owned company. The staff members were used to do all the mobile marketing activities. This was in addition to their landline activity. Landlines were at their peak, and mobile was adding to the system.

Mobile was more high-tech, and very quickly added workload to officers. The RSUs were the places where mobile equipments were installed. The power plants were common to both systems of operations. I was a sub-divisional engineer responsible to maintain RSUs in the Urban area Bidar.

I was assisted by two JTOs. The Rural SDE used to look after Bidar SDCA.

One Mr Kante was rural SDE. He was promoted to a higher grade and transferred to the neighboring place Gulbarga. Now the TDM Bidar assigned the additional work of SDE Rural to me.

Now my workload doubled and I was restless. The functioning of the rural system was entirely different.

Many new experiments were being made on WLL networks. Naturally, my attention was drawn towards rural works, and there were many problems to be attended to.

In 2008, the monsoon broke out with heavy damage to working systems. On a single day, four exchanges failed in the rural system. We had our vehicle and went to see and restore systems one by one. That was an election day and most of the staff members went to cast their vote. Janawada system was completely collapsed. The power supply was not available for a couple of days. The engine alternator was not functioning. The JTO in-charge was on deputation to election duty. Most of the control cards were burnt out due to a lightning strike. Therefore both landlines and mobile systems did not function from the Janawada exchange system.

    I was helpless and has to wait to get the manpower and restoring material. It took a couple of days to make the system work. There was a revenue loss. TDM wanted to recover the losses out of my pay and allowances. I was given a charge sheet to that effect. Now the question was that-” is that charges correct?” What was my fault ?. I was of the opinion of collective responsibility. But the charge was fixed on a single person when there was no control on natural calamity like monsoon break down.

Neither the TDM nor the DE conserved visited the failed exchange to assess the situation. This was an additional charge imposed on me in addition to my daily urban activity. After this incident, one more exchange failed at Sindol in an internal electric short circuit in the switch room. The exchange was burnt to ashes.

Such uncommon problems made me think to quit the battlefield and retire from service.

All that what I did for more than thirty years, as a soldier of communications, made me to quit once and forever. I wrote my voluntary retirement willingness letter to the Bangalore circle office and took retirement in 2009.