A fire that broke out in one of the most important PTCL telephone exchanges has partially suspended the communication system in Lahore and other cities of Punjab.
The Egerton Road exchange came under fire last night, however initially the fire fighters have managed to control the damage. But later in the morning the fire broke again and nearly half of the building burnt.
Almost 20 telephone exchanges are connected to Egerton Road office and it is considered the broadband hub. Therefore all the land-line, Internet and IPTV services in Lahore and adjacent areas are down since last night.
It is also told that international communications, government helplines including Edhi, Rescue 1122 and bank ATMs are also disrupted.
Fire brigade officials said that the cause of fire could be a short circuit and due to the extensive network of Fibre optic wires and other flammable objects, it was not possible to control the damage once they caught fire. The initial estimates suggest that the damage is worth millions of rupees as the expensive machinery and wires have been completely burnt.
According to PTCL officials now all the services are re-routed to Garden Town (Kalma Chowk) exchange, and hopefully with in the next 12 hours, half of the systems will be up and running. It merits mentioning here that 3G services and other Internet services providers have also been affected due to this fire.
