Centre asks telecom operators to activate ICR in J&K

Jammu, Aug 27: The Centre has directed all the telecom service providers (TSPs) to activate the Intra Circle Roaming (ICR) facility for the Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory till September 2, 2025, or till further instructions. It has been instructed that the ICR facility will continue to be extended to all in-roamers in Jammu and Kashmir.

The instructions have been issued by the Disaster Management Unit in the Department of Telecommunications of the Ministry of Communications, Government of India, in a communique to the regulatory Heads of Bharti Airtel, BSNL, Reliance-Jio, and Vodafone-Idea on August 26 evening.

“In view of prevailing situations due to heavy rainfall and multiple landslides in Jammu and Kashmir UT and in accordance with the clause 29.6 of unified license and as per provisions of SOP 2020 for responding to disasters, all TSPs are hereby instructed to activate the Intra Circle Roaming (ICR) facility for the Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory with immediate effect till 23:59hours of September 2, 2025 or till further instructions; whichever is earlier,” the communique read.

“The ICR facility shall continue to be extended to all in-roamers in Jammu and Kashmir. This may be treated as ‘top priority’, please,” the communique said.

Notably, due to adverse weather, telecom, mobile internet services, including fibre and landline internet, were badly impacted almost across J&K on August 26, further compounding the woes of people.

This rendered the people affected by flash floods and other vagaries of weather helpless, as neither could they air their grievances nor reach the designated authorities for rescue or immediate relief.

At many places, the outage also hampered relief and rescue operations as the officials themselves could not contact field staff working on the ground.

Jammu Municipal Corporation (JMC) Commissioner Devansh Yadav, late Tuesday (August 26) evening, stated that the mobile network was down or slow in many parts of Jammu city due to damaged network cables at Bhagwati Nagar Bridge.

The approach road to the 4th Tawi Bridge in Bhagwati Nagar in Jammu was damaged in flash floods on Tuesday.

“Mobile network down/slow in many parts of Jammu city! It’s due to damage at the Bhagwati Nagar bridge of network cables… will be restored in the next few hours,” Yadav posted on ‘X’.

Officials stated that the damage to optical fibres in both the Kashmir and Jammu regions led to an outage, which also impacted banking services.

“Services were restored to a great extent on Wednesday after the optical fibre was reconnected in Jammu,” officials said.