Prepaid mobile phones were set to bleep back to life in the Valley although Internet freedom remained a distant dream.

Government spokesperson Rohit Kansal on Saturday said voice and SMS facilities on all local prepaid SIM cards across Jammu and Kashmir would be restored during the day, ending a five-and-a-half-month-long wait for nearly 3.5 million residents of the Valley.

Internet and mobile connectivity had been suspended ahead of August 5, when the central government moved to scrap the then state’s special status and redraw its map.

Mobile connectivity was later gradually restored to post-paid connections.

The Valley has around seven million subscribers and Saturday’s announcement would benefit more than half of these subscribers who have prepaid connections.

Till late in the evening, however, the promised relief was nowhere in sight.

Kansal also announced the restoration of 2G Internet services — for post-paid SIMS — to the whole of Jammu and two districts of Kashmir — Bandipore and Kupwara.

Services had been restored in five Jammu districts some days back and five more reportedly got the relief on Saturday. Eight of Kashmir’s 10 districts, including Srinagar, are still without Net connection.

The bigger issue, however, is that most people who got the low-speed Internet back cannot access social media or search engines like Google.

Officials said the subscribers can access 153 “white-listed sites” — or government-approved sites that don’t include any media website and are mostly related to e-commerce, banking and education.

The decision has come in response to a recent Supreme Court order that said access to the Internet was a fundamental right and asked the government to review the communications ban in Jammu and Kashmir. Many in the recently created Union Territory, however, believe the announcement is a ploy to circumvent the court order.

“The competent authority has released a list of all 153 websites that have been identified as white list category and can be accessed through 2G mobile data services,” Kansal said.

An officer with a private telecom company said many people would not be able to access the white-listed websites.

“The problem is that it (2G Internet) is low speed and many sites will be difficult to open. We have been getting complaints in Jammu where 2G connection had already been restored,” he said.

In a respite for software companies, Kansal said they would be provided with fixed-line Internet connectivity by the Internet Service Providers (ISPs- BSNL/Private Service Providers) but would face a lot of restrictions.

Kansal said the government would consider providing mobile Internet connectivity on prepaid SIM cards but for that telecom service providers would have to initiate the process of verifying the credentials of these subscribers according to the norms applicable for post-paid connections.