Airtel goes dead for hours, customers furious
Hyderabad: Thousands of Airtel customers in Hyderabad went clueless on Saturday when the signal bars on their mobiles suddenly disappeared disabling them from making calls or accessing the internet.
The six-hour service downtime left the customers of India's leading mobile telecom operator, agitated, with some customers even staging a protest outside Airtel's main office in Begumpet. It is understood that a technical snag in the regular system upgradation process has brought the network onto its heels at around 6 am on Saturday.
'I initially thought that there was some problem with my mobile so I removed and reinserted the SIM and the battery. It was only after my room mate also reported network issue that I realized that there was some problem at the service provider end,' said IT engineer Suparna Biswas.
The network providers promised that the service would be restored after 1 pm. However, many customers reported disruption in network services till late in the evening. 'My data network is still not working. I complained the same to the customer care,' said another user Umesh Chandra.
Telecom experts say that technical glitches in server and network equipment could have led to outage. They opined that as landline services were uninterrupted, the problem was with the Airtel.
An Airtel spokesperson said the technical downtime had affected the network in certain regions of the city, leading to disruptions in services.
he informed that the services were disrupted in Begumpet, Jubilee Hills and Banjara Hills. However, Airtel users from other parts of the city like Gachibowli, Madhapur and Domalguda also faced problem with the network.
The Airtel executive added that the outage has nothing to do with the launch of 4G services in the city and dismissed the rumours that there was a foul play in the backdrop of US President Barack Obama's visit to India.
A senior police official confirmed that there was nothing concerning national security with the network blackout. 'The Airtel issue is merely a technical one,' the officer said.
News Posted: 25 January, 2015
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