Cellular phone service returns to Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 December 2006, 14:54 GMT]
Mobile phone customers subscribing to the wireless-carrier Dialog GSM have started receiving dial-tones sin Jaffna district starting from the Christmas day after a break of 5 months, residents in Jaffna said.

More than 40,000 people who had mobile telephones in the Peninsula lost the facilities when the Sri Lankan Military cut-off the services without prior notice following the break out of fresh violence on 11 August.

Two telephone companies, Dialog GSM, which owns 90 % of the connections, and Mobitel, a collaborative company of Sri Lankan Telecom, have their main relay station in the Palaly Military Base. The Sri Lanka Army had severed the wireless links without consulting either the companies or the customers.

However, in November, the Military Command permitted the functioning of the Dialog cellular phones in and around the Base for the benefit of the soldiers.

In the other parts of the Peninsula, only the Dialog cellular phones started to function from Monday.

Meanwhile, the officials of the Dialog GSM said the decision to resume the services was taken solely by the Sri Lanka Military.