CHANDIGARH, Aug 16 — Claims of the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) notwithstanding, trunk services from the city and the surrounding areas continued to remain disrupted for the fifth day today on account of software problems in the Trunk Automatic Exchange (TAX) network.

Hundreds of consumers wanting to dial their relatives and friends in and outside the country were in for a disappointment as they could not get through the desired number even after repeated attempts. In a majority of cases, the subscribers could not get connected to the desired number and had to listen to the oft-repeated recorded message:" All lines in this route are busy, please dial after some time”.

And when some of the lucky ones indeed got connected the conversation got disrupted midway repeating the same message, alleged several residents and STD booth owners. And repeated efforts to dial the number proved a futile exercise.

The problem was acute during the evening hours when the concessional tariff was in operation. A majority of the residents had to return disappointed from the STD booths even after wasting hours at the booths.

The most-affected during the last five days had been the general public, who had not been able to contact their relatives particularly on occasions such as Raksha Bandhan. “I wanted to confirm from my brother in Calcutta whether he had received the rakhis I sent but had not been able to get his number for the past three days,” complained Ms Rashmi, a housewife.

Not only trunk services, services of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and fax services had also been disrupted thus affecting commercial activity. The ISPs complained that the complaints were piling up although it was not their fault.

Meanwhile, Mr Prithipal Singh, Principal General Manager, Telecom, when contacted, claimed that the exchange was “under observation” and had been “stable” since morning. However, independent inquiries revealed that there had been only a slight improvement in the telecom services.

And with the lines almost down for the past five days, the STD owners are at the receiving end and there had been a continuous decline in their business. Before the fault the daily sales at the booth was around Rs 2,000 but now it had come down to about Rs 700, said Mr Sohan Singh, an employee of an STD booth in Sector 35.