The recent floods and landslides across Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand have exposed the fragility of communication systems during disasters. In times when lives depend on swift rescue and accurate information, the collapse or disruption of mobile and internet services adds a dangerous layer of isolation for affected communities. Mobile connectivity today is not a luxury. It is a basic infrastructure on par with roads, electricity and healthcare. When families are cut off from each other, when patients cannot reach doctors, or when authorities struggle to coordinate rescue teams because networks have collapsed, the cost is paid in fear, delay and sometimes in lives. Mobile and internet services still remain erratic in several parts of Jammu and Kashmir after recent floods and landslides damaged network infrastructure. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah too had expressed concern over the communication outage, drawing parallels with the blackouts experienced during the 2014 floods and the restrictions imposed after August 2019. He said connectivity had remained almost non-existent, with only a faint trickle of data available on Jio mobile. “There is no fixed-line WiFi, browsing is impossible, most apps don’t work, X loads painfully slowly, and WhatsApp can barely handle short text messages. I haven’t felt this disconnected since the difficult days of 2014 and 2019,” Omar wrote on X. Union Minister for Communications and Development of North Eastern Region, Jyotiraditya Scindia, on Thursday chaired a review meeting on the restoration of telecom services in flood-hit areas of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir. The meeting was attended by Secretary (Telecom) Dr Neeraj Mittal, along with senior officials from the Ministry of Communications, BSNL, and private telecom operators. The Minister directed that immediate steps be taken to restore services in all affected regions, with priority to Doda and Udhampur districts in Jammu, where connectivity remains affected. Authorities are also monitoring inter-district and Valley-wide disruptions to ensure a gradual return to normal. Officials informed the Minister that most fibre cuts have already been repaired, with ground teams working to reconnect damaged lines, create loops and resume services. Intra-Circle Roaming (ICR) has been enabled by the Department of Telecommunications, allowing users to connect through other networks when their primary service is unavailable. The government and telecom operators have acted quickly to repair fibre cuts, create alternate loops and enable intra-circle roaming, which allows users to connect to any available network. These steps have been critical in restoring partial services, but they also show how dependent we remain on fragile, land-based systems. One landslide can snap a line and take an entire district or region offline. This is where a long-term strategy must step in. India has spoken about satellite-based internet and mobile networks for years, but their rollout has been slow. Connectivity is the thread that ties together survival, relief and recovery. Without it, even the best rescue infrastructure can falter. If disasters are becoming more frequent and intense, then resilience must start with making sure that every citizen can remain connected to help, to information, and to each other.
Network Freeze
