MUMBAI, OCT 5: The total collapse of Insat-2D satellite will result in a further three day shut down at the National Stock Exchange, the country's largest stock exchange. Trading at NSE was suspended on Friday last and will resume only on Thursday.

Besides, trading at Over-the-Counter Exchange of India (OTCEI) and the Calcutta Stock Exchange will also suffer. CSE and OTCEI, along with IDBI and UTI, are likely to have their network up along with NSE as their VSATs also have to be realigned.

A NSE statement said on Sunday that normal trading could commence only from October 9 even though the process of shifting from Insat-2D to 2A has already commenced for all the V-Sats on transporders 13 or 14 and the work is expected to be completed by October 8.

The status for open positions of members for the solitary day of trading in this settlement will be decided on Tuesday.

NSE will require about four days to transfer 781 V-Sats to Insat-2A. Once this process is completed, the exchange will commence the process of transferring all its V-Sat connections to either Insat-2B or Insat-2C.

According to exchange officials, the process of shifting from Insat-2A to Insat-2C or Insat-2B would take about 3-4 weeks, but this process would be undertaken without any disruption to normal trading. NSE and HCL-Comnet officials expect to transfer close to 100 V-Sats to Insat-2A by Sunday evening. Giving an account of the developments over the past few days, exchange officials said late on October 1, part of the NSE network which was on the C-14 transponder of Insat-2D had developed a technical snag.

On October 3, the exchange was informed that transponders 13, 15 and 17 were operational. At this point of time there were two options before the exchange either to revert back to Insat-2A or to move to one of these three transponders on Insat-2D.

Over a two-day period, the exchange managed to transfer 650 V-Sats to transponder 13 on Insat-2D. However, on Sunday morning, the exchange was informed by the Network Operation Control Centre (NOCC) that Insat-2D had lost the earth lock and the entire satellite had been rendered inoperational.

"Now with entire Insat-2D being inoperational, the NSE has decided to shift all the V-Sats back to 2A (the original satellite on which all NSE V-Sats were connected)," it said.

NSE has been forced to first move to Insat-2A and then to Insat-2D as both of them have the same angle and therefore the shifting could be done faster, the same is not true with Insat-2B or Insat 2C. Thus, shifting directly to Insat-2C or Insat-2B would have meant keeping the exchange closed for 3-4 weeks, an option which had to be totally rejected by the exchange authorities.

The shifting of the V-Sats would be undertaken after the post-trading hours and the process will be completed even as trading continues uninterrupted through Insat-2A.The exchange has, in fact, incurred expenditure in excess of Rs 2 crore in the back and forth shifting of V-Sats from one satellite to another.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.