Fri, 19 July 2013

SRINAGAR: Mobile and 3G internet services were suspended Thursday in the Kashmir Valley after the killing of six civilians by the BSF in Jammu"™s Ramban district.

The services were suspended in the latter half of the day. Though government said they had issued no orders to snap the internet services, telecom operators said they had received a"non-verbal" communiqué to suspend the services as a precautionary measure.

"I have not issued any orders to suspend Internet services, the services are running," District Development Commissioner Farooq Shah told Kashmir Reader.

However, telecom operators said they were told by government officials to suspend Mobile and 3G services without citing any reason.

"We received verbal communiqué to take down the GPRS and 3G services. The speed of the Broadband connections has also been reduced," an official of the BSNL, the largest telecom and Internet provider told Kashmir reader on anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

An official of the Reliance telecom company said that without citing any reason government officials ordered suspension of Mobile and 3G services. There was no immediate word from rest of the telecom companies.

Government often resorts to blanket ban of the Internet as a pre-emptive measure to avoid any escalation of protests. Authorities had suspended Internet services during the 2010 summer uprising in the Valley as some people used the Internet to mobilize protests.