Overview
- A blaze broke out on Saturday morning at the BSNL building on Anna Salai after a guard spotted thick smoke from the second floor.
- Firefighters brought the fire under control after more than an hour as heavy smoke slowed traffic on the busy arterial road.
- TANGEDCO said its servers at the site were affected, temporarily halting online bill payments.
- Backup servers for Tamil Nadu’s 108 ambulance service at the BSNL facility were damaged, while the main control room continued functioning.
- An official release said mobile voice and data services in Chennai, the rest of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana were affected and are partially restored, with the cause under investigation pointing to an electrical short circuit and a suspected battery explosion.