MUMBAI: Perhaps for the first in the recent past, trading was halted for the longest time at the largest Indian stock exchange in the country as National Stock Exchange (NSE) went offline at 11.40 am today in what it said was due to some problem with its telecom services providers.

NSE tweeted from its official Twitter handle at 11:59 AM, "NSE has multiple telecom links with two service providers to ensure redundancy. We have received communication from both the telecom service providers that there are issues with their links due to which there is an impact on NSE system."

In the same tweet they added, "We are working on restoring the systems as soon as possible. In view of the above, all the segments have been closed at 11:40 and will be restored as soon as issue is resolved."

While market participants were hoping that trading would be resumed shortly, however the disruption went on for nearly four hours as NSE announced a complete halt to trading across the market, including cash equity and currency segments. NSE latter extended the trading hours beyond 3.30 p.m. up to 5 p.m.

Market participants said that they had advised their clients to shift their trades on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) since they were witnessing an outage since the opening session itself.

Several brokers have said that while NSE reported the glitch at 11.40 am they have been facing issues with streaming feeds for Nifty, Bank Nifty, and other indices from 10 am onwards. An update on NSE website showed prices as of 10.08 am.