Fed up with the poor mobile network coverage in their area, villagers decided to detain a technician who was working on a mobile phone mast and tie him to a post.
The incident, reported in mid-September by several English-language media outlets specialising in unusual stories, is said to have erupted following a long series of connection problems. The residents were particularly critical of the operator for the persistently weak signal and the lack of improvement despite their complaints.
When the technician arrived on site, he therefore became, quite against his will, the very embodiment of everything that was wrong with their mobile phones.
Residents tied him to a post in order to draw attention to their grievances regarding the quality of the network.
This was, of course, a completely disproportionate way of pointing out that they were… having trouble getting a signal.
The story quickly went viral on social media and in the international oddities press, where it sparked numerous amused comments. Above all, it highlights a much less amusing reality: in some rural areas of India, telecoms infrastructure remains patchy, and outages or slow speeds can be a real economic hindrance.
But it must be said that the method used to demand better network coverage does have a certain sense of irony.
As for the technician, he probably discovered a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘being stuck on the network’ that day.
The moral of the story: when your phone has no signal, perhaps you should avoid taking it out on the person climbing the mast.
