September 13, 2007	Thursday	Sha'aban 30, 1428

HARIPUR, Sept 12: Frequent faults, cross-lines and constant disturbance in telephone lines were the problems hundreds of subscribers of Haripur have been exposed to for the last six months, subscribers and official sources told Dawn here on Wednesday.

Delay in responding to subscribers complaints by local telephone authorities was affecting the potential clientele of the company as the poor service was constantly irking users and most of them were contemplating to get their telephones disconnected.

Ahsan Shaukat, a resident of the city area, said: “They removed the fault after a tiresome wait of 25 days which forced me to seek an alternative and get rid of this problem once and for all.”

He said that his phone was fixed only when he approached some influential people of the area.

Another subscriber, Noor Elahi, of the Mohalla Railway Station said that he was planning to switch over to using a cell phone or a wireless loop system as his phone mostly remained out of order during the last six months and every time he called the telephone exchange he was told that there was a cable fault which would be fixed soon.

It was reported that more than a 1,000 telephone subscribers of Haripur city and its surrounding areas were facing various problems.

It was observed that owing to open joints in manholes the Internet speed was slow and there were frequent disconnections, which was irking subscribers.

An official source, on the condition of anonymity, said that untapped and open joints in the open manholes were the root cause of problems in telephone lines.

He said that owing to lack of proper joints the rain water seeped into these joints and damaged the lines rendering telephone connections out of order.

The SDO telephones said that there was a cable problem as a result of which many telephone lines were not working.