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Nagpur: Low connectivity… fluctuating connection, weak signals, constant 4G buffering…and what not! Still you call it a digital district? While this may amuse most of you, but still BSNL, perhaps the biggest culprit in giving out frustrating customer experience is claiming that Nagpur is India’s first digital district.
Interestingly, the announcement by Namratta Tiwari, general manager of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) came at a time when Nagpur civic body is drawing sharp criticism for falling steeply to 137th position in recent cleanliness survey.
Tiwari claimed that it took 1,700 kilometres of optic fiber cables to connect 776 gram panchayats and 71 talathi offices and cost Rs 100 crore for Nagpur to become India’s first digital district.
However she failed to respond why there is still poor network and phone connectivity in the district.
Tiwari made this fluke at a programme organized recently at Central Telegraph Office, Civil Lines, to celebrate the city office’s achievements where chief executing officer of Nagpur Zilla Parishad AS Nimbalkar was present.
According to Tiwari, the city office recorded a turnaround of Rs 525 crore in the last fiscal and a Rs 25 crore profit for the first time in nine years. Internet connection in the district will offer a speed of up to 100 megabytes per second.
As a matter of fact, the internet connectivity is the worst problem that Nagpurians are facing at the moment. “You have to browse at the pity of the network, as its quite uncertain how long the speed will last in a particular time frame. Such officers should be put to task for making such false claims. They should first do the reality check,” laments a net user Vishal Sabharwal.
“The network was inaugurated by chief minister Devendra Fadnavis from Mantralaya, Mumbai, as he set up videoconferences with school students in five gram panchayats as well as a doctor in JJ Hospital, Mumbai,” she added.
Nimbalkar said that district collector Sachin Kurve had set a tight deadline to complete the project. “We also faced security issues while laying cables in villages because locals there thought the engineers working through the night were miscreants,” he said.
