Internet outage interrupts train ticket sales

Thousands of customers queuing to buy advance tickets for Eid journeys home are facing difficulties after internet problems interrupted sales.

Ticket sales were interrupted for over one-and-a-half hours at Dhaka’s Kamalapur Railway Station on Saturday, the fourth day of advance ticket sales. Ticket sales were also interrupted for over a half-hour at the Chittagong Railway Station over similar internet issues.

Rail officials opened ticket counters at the two stations at 8:00 am, but problems started at Kamalapur around 9:30 am. Ticket sales slowed as an internet outage severed the connection with the server.

Sales came to a complete halt at Kamalapur at around 10:30 am. Sales were restarted at around 12 noon after lines were fixed, said Kamalapur Station Manager Sitangshu Chakravarty.

Eastern region railway officials said that ticket sales were also halted at the Chittagong Railway Station between 10:45 am and 11:30 pm due to similar internet problems, bdnews24 reported.

According to rail authorities, sales were also halted at the Chittagong Railway Station for about an hour-and-a-half on Friday because of problems on the fibre-optic network’s connections.