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Internet has only partly been restored in Azerbaijan after a fire broke out in Delta Telecom company founded by the Communications Ministry, according to the local news agency Turan.

The Ministry said in a statement that the fire had caused a serious damage by destroying over 30 percent of the equipment of the company. The fire was put out by the evening with the forces and resources of the Emergency Ministry. There is no information available as where exactly it took place and particularly what equipment was damaged. Measures have reportedly been taken for creating alternative channels of communication and restoring the Internet in Azerbaijan.

Trend agency reports that the Internet outage affected the transport work in Baku. Shafa Mehmangizi, the press secretary of the Intelligent Transport Management Centre, said that though the outage had not caused traffic jams, there are still some problems. “Data transmission to the monitors at bus stops has been suspended,” she explained. “The Centre’s hotline is also non-operational.”

According to Haqqin.az, the massive Internet outage paralysed the bank operations; they could not carry out online transfers and were forced to stop their work. The Internet failure also touched the travel agencies, which were not able to book online tickets. Pay Point and MilliON online payment services were closed down in Baku.

‘Informed sources from the Ministry of Communications and High Technologies told Haqqin.az’ that a meeting was held at the ministry on 16 November in the morning to discuss modernisation of the Internet provider’s equipment, which would enhance the power and opportunities of the system and which the specialists would commence that day.  According to the information, the operations would be complete by the evening. Assumingly, the fire could have broken out during the modernisation works with the equipment burning up at the station.
The Internet outage occurred on 16 November at 16:10 of the local time. Practically, all of the Internet providers and mobile operators in Azerbaijan suffered from the total outage. Reportedly, only the Bakcell operator's users could access mobile Internet.