Phone Lines Cut

[Tiger]

Here is a BBC article posted on Feb 18th. My friend are scheduled to leave in one and half weeks. I am really concerned, and not sure if I am going.

Nepal cuts off phone links again

Arrests of opposition figures have continued since the coup
The authorities in Nepal have cut off all telephone lines again on a day of planned pro-democracy protests.
The same move was made when King Gyanendra staged a royal coup two weeks ago for what the authorities said were security reasons.

Meanwhile, the United States has said it may suspend military aid if the king does not restore power to an elected government soon.

The US, European Union and India have recalled their envoys from Kathmandu.

The BBC's Charles Haviland in Kathmandu says telephones adopted a constant busy tone on Friday as they had for a week after the royal takeover, while mobile lines have been cut off all along.

At the same time, the authorities have continued detaining people.

Nepalis will once more be in the dark about their families and friends who are not living nearby.


The king has said he acted to save democracy

Medical and criminal emergencies will be harder to respond to.

The flow of information on which the media depends will cease for however long the lines are cut.

Rising criticism

This is reinforced by ongoing media censorship and arrests of those whom the authorities mistrust.

Nepal has come under rising criticism since King Gyanendra seized control of the country two weeks ago.

The human rights group Amnesty International, which has just visited Nepal, has warned that human rights abuses will increase, because people who were exposing the excesses of both the army and the Maoist rebels are now being muzzled.

The US envoy to Nepal James Moriarty told reporters in Washington that the cutting of military aid by the US, European nations and India remains a serious consideration for such governments.

Major donors such as India, the US and the EU say they are reviewing their assistance to Nepal.

On Tuesday, Denmark became the first country to suspend its aid programme.

Nepal has responded to the criticism by saying it needed to take those steps to fight the long-running Maoist insurgency.

The Maoists have been fighting a nine-year insurgency in which about 11,000 people have been killed.

[Don Gibson]

I got an email from my brother yesterday. He said all was calm and fine in Kat. Don't get too concerned... but be careful.

[yakshaver]

A number of people were able to ring Nepal today. The media is sometimes getting ahead of itself.

[Nariwal]

I have tried to ring Nepal for 5 straight days no luck. I am comforted in the fact that Don says things are somewhat OK. I arrive in KTM on March 3 for the first visit.
Nariwal

[webmaster]

Land lines off 7 am till 4 pm. You could call IN to Nepal from overseas, but you could not call out or call withing the country.

ATMs, airline computers and internet continued to work. Cybercafes that had radio connections to the ISPs continued to work; those that use dial up connections did not.

Supposedly this was to stop communication of groups that planned to protest the "democracy day" proceedings.

[Lars]

Cybercafes that had radio connections to the ISPs continued to work; those that use dial up connections did not.

What are these "radio connections to the ISP's"?

I have had a bunch of modems, ISDN and now cable broadband, but
have never seen a radio connection to the net.

[yakshaver]

The government gave no explanation why phone lines were cut off for a few hours on Friday. It makes sense, from their perspective, not to have the phones working for protesters to organise themselve. However by the afternoon, as the demonstration abated, the phones were back on and people rang their contacts in Nepal without hinderance. I guess the "communication black-out" wroked well, when the king took power on 1 February, in keeping things quiet and demonstrations and bandths to a minimum. So this policy is likely to continue whenever the parlamentary parties want to stage a demonstration or when the Maoists organise a bandth.

[webmaster]

Wireless modem to the ISP centre where it then connects to a VSAT link to the internet backbone in Singapore, UK or India.

Many cybercafes have this kind of link.

[SEHill]

Man...after three weeks of calling into Nepal, I finally got through. This is actually one of my stipulations for going in March. I called the hotel that we are scheduled to stay at in Kathmandu. They had no clue what I was saying, but it was great to hear someone's voice inside of Nepal. I asked if everything was safe and calm around the hotel, and he resonded, "...everything fine, no problem." This is the response that I have received from every contact within the country. Everyone that I have talked with seems to never want to give bad news, and they always want to be accommodating. I sincerely do pray that there will be peace, and we will be safe.

God Bless,

SEH

[Unregistered]

My boyfriend lives in Nepal and we usually email each other every day but, I have not recieved any email from him since february 16 2005. It has been 8 days since I heard from him. I am worried. Are the phones and internets haveing problems right now over there?
Please do let me know,
thanks

[Boulia]

I received an email from KTM about 12 hours ago - have not tried phone lines. All is quiet in KTM.

[Linwood]

I've had no trouble with emails getting to or from Kathmandu since about February 10th, when the internet opened up again, with the one exception of Democracy Day (last Friday, I think it was) when the King turned the phones off to prevent protesters from organizing.

And my friend in Kathmandu was actually able to get emails out on February 3rd and 4th, although how, I still have no idea. He's not a computer expert, but he is resourceful.

As for the phones, I don't know but I've read about troubles on other messageboards.

Good luck!

Linwood

[seh]

I had trouble for days. I received busy signals as if the calls were not even reaching Nepal. I then decided to try many times in a row, and finally received a line. It takes some time, but I found repeated attempts to be the key.

Good Luck,

SEH

[yakshaver]

Phones and emails work quite ok. I have spoken to my contacts on the phone recently and email daily.
You have to persevere with the phone, as with any third world country. But it's the same now as it was before the king's coup.