Mobile operators' network quality is suffering for the fibre optic cable cut and power shortage across the country in recent times.

In some cases, the operators are facing power shortages that last longer than the capacity of their backups. Operators can arrange backup support for six to eight hours a day.

The site then goes offline, leaving subscribers in the area with no network, said top officials of Banglalink yesterday in a workshop with the Telecom Reporters Network, Bangladesh (TRNB) at their office.

Between September last year and March this year, Banglalink suffered 212 instances of cable cuts that left huge areas of the country without network, said Taimur Rahman, chief corporate and regulatory officer of Banglalink.

In most of the cases, it is because of the different government agencies, especially roads and highways department, he said, citing the Dhaka-Tangail highway extension work as an example.

The Jatrabari-Mawa highway construction also caused 25 counts of network outages.

"In most of the cases, it took days to re-establish the cable's connection and customers suffered for the meantime," Rahman added. Furthermore, the mobile operators do not have the authority to do maintenance work of the cable; there is another entity that is liable for this work.

 Sometimes, Wasa and other government agencies also run their development work and as they are not maintaining the safety clauses applicable for telecom services, the frequency of cable cuts is rising, said another official of the operator.

Power shortage is another concern in rural areas and all operators are facing serious challenges because of it, they said. During the summer months, the power shortages may create more problems, they said.

On average, one-fifth the time operators are facing load-shedding problems and sometimes the number increases.

When the session was running, which was about 1 pm yesterday, they said, out of their 9,000 sites across the country 1,400 did not have power connection and about 900 sites were off as the backup support also died.

Banglalink CEO Erik Aas and other senior officials were also present in the session.