September 10, 2007	Monday	Sha'aban 27, 1428

TAXILA, Sept 9: Over 1,200 telephones lines in Wah Cantonment have been out-of-order for the last 24 hours, when unknown thieves stole the underground PTCL cable, near the GT Road, during the early hours of Sunday and these had not been restored till the filing this report.

Over 1,200 PTCL subscribers in Wah Cantonment were affected when some miscreants cut off the underground cable and stole it, resulting in the suspension of telephone connections across a large area, including Nawababad, Chachi Mohallah, Gulberg, Asghar Town, Jallala Road, Ismailabad, Quaid-i-Azam Street and the adjoining residential area of the Pakistan Ordnance Factory (POF).

Both domestic and commercial subscribers have been facing a lot of inconvenience due to the failure of the telephone network.

People whose business were most heavily dependent on telephone lines, especially Internet cafes and public call offices (PCOs), were the most hard hit and their business came to a virtual standstill.

On being informed of the fault, a PTCL team reached the spot and began the required replacement and maintenance work.

PTCL divisional engineer Syed Arsalan Haider, said unknown people cut off and stole the over 1,000-line underground cable, which caused the telephone network to collapse.

He ruled out the possibility of sabotage and attributed the anti-social act to professional thieves for stealing the costly cable.

He said similar incidents had occurred in the past as well and recalled over six such occurrences in the last two years only.

He said the telecommunication network would be restored completely and the situation would normalise within the next six hours, as technicians will keep working till the telephone lines were restored, he added.