Despite 2G Net, online shopping offline in Valley

M Aamir Khan

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Tribune News Service

Srinagar, January 30

Even as partial 2G services have been restored in the Valley, online shopping continues to remain out of bounds for residents. Though a few online shopping sites can be accessed with ‘nagging delays’ and courier services too have resumed, but most of them do not deliver to the Valley.

At the same time, Kashmiris living outside the Valley too are unable to send deliveries to their local addresses.

“I had gone to New Delhi for a few days but was unable to place orders to my Srinagar address. Now that I am back and can access sites like Amazon, with nagging delays after the resumption of 2G services, deliveries are still not available. Someone told me Decathlon delivers to Srinagar but popular shopping sites like Myntra, Jabong etc do not open at 2G speed,” said Tabish Jan, a local.

Though the practice had become quite popular in the Valley in the past, Kashmir Courier Association chief Zahoor Qari said courier services had already resumed but online shopping would restart only after a ‘proper set-up’ was put in place.

“We resumed sending couriers in the last week of August and from September, we started receiving them too. However, cash on delivery facility is not yet available since the Internet was not resumed and therefore, payments could not be updated. Since a proper system has not been set up and all do not have free access to the Internet, the prepaid system has not been started. However, Blue Dart recently started prepaid shipments…. Once free Net access is there, online shopping too will be resumed,” Qari said.

Since August 5 last year, normal life has been thrown out of gear. Phone and Net services too were shut. Postpaid services were restored on October 14 last year but 2G was resumed from January 25 this year with access only to 301 whitelisted websites.