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MTNL cuts Indian banks off from the world for three days

All India's financial dealings with the rest of the world came to a standstill on Friday night and was restored only on Tuesday night, no thanks to a Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited line fault.

Almost all international fund transactions outside India have to pass through a network dubbed SWIFT which handles about a million messages every day. The network, hired by the Reserve Bank of India and provided by an international group of bankers, enables information about transfer of funds to be transmitted to and from the country. That was what stopped on Friday night. "No money was going in and out of the country," said a banker.

The fault occurred in an MTNL line in Bombay, through which all the messages are funnelled to the Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited, and from there they go across the world.

RBI officials said the MTNL did not quite realise the effect of the fault in the line. Bank officials had to exert a great deal of pressure at the highest levels to get MTNL to move on the problem, they said.

MTNL officials claimed the lines were not down all the time and that they had heard the line was restored on Monday.

An MTNL official warned that though banks have been getting the best possible service, MTNL could not guarantee a line would remain fault-free. If the link was so important, the MTNL could set up a standby arrangement, he said.

Bank officials said they were anyway getting alternative arrangements set up, in the form of modems and ISD lines so that they can link up with the network outside. But they still have to go through the VSNL. If the VSNL link breaks...

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