Airtel customers across India wake up to network outage

Summary: Airtel faces sporadic network outage across India.

By Manan Kakkar for India IT | December 26, 2011 -- 21:18 GMT (13:18 PST)

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Today I fly back to Mumbai after a 10-day visit to North India. A lazy morning that involved no travel turned into a "Oh crap! "one when my phone showed no network connectivity. I woke my cousin to find me an eraser and I cleaned my SIM card, my phone still couldn't connect. Realizing that I will have to make a trip to the carrier outlet for a new SIM card troubled me. I asked for directions and was mentally preparing myself to go when I checked Twitter. God bless Twitter for Twitter. As it turns out, Airtel is facing some technical issues. The company's official account sent out this message:

airtel1

Going through their twitter page, they have been apologizing to a lot of users who are complaining about network outages.

Update: There are several tweets claiming Airtel's servers in Mumbai have caught fire which is being seen as the reason for the outage. Airtel says the outage has affected their Western region.

Topics: Outage, Networking

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7 comments

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RE: Airtel customers across India wake up to network outage

Change to BSNL. Complete coverege 24x7.

Kobeny
27 December, 2011 02:39

Reply Vote
- RE: Airtel customers across India wake up to network outage
  
  @Kobeny : Really? Just pray you don't run into any issues with BSNL/MTNL. My broadband took six months to fix!
  
  Lord_of_the_Singhs
  27 December, 2011 02:51
  
  Reply Vote
  - RE: Airtel customers across India wake up to network outage
    
    @Lord_of_the_Singhs
    Isolated incident perhaps.
    Or did you default on your bills?
    
    Kobeny
    27 December, 2011 22:39
    
    Reply Vote
RE: Airtel customers across India wake up to network outage

Official Airtel response -

A technical outage has affected our network in the western region resulting in disruption of some services. We are working towards rectifying the outage at the earliest. We deeply regret the inconvenience caused to our customers.- Airtel spokesperson

rajeshkale30
27 December, 2011 04:24

Reply Vote
RE: Airtel customers across India wake up to network outage

Statement from Bharti Airtel: ???There was a network outage in the Western region this morning as a result of a fire in our central POP (point of presence) location in Malad, Mumbai. Our teams have been working since morning to normalise all affected services. Mobile voice, Blackberry and SMS services have largely been restored and are stabilizing. We are working towards restoring 2G & 3G data services later tonight. However, for the Enterprise services like IPLC, Leased lines, MPLS and Internet services, the restoration work is in progress and these services are likely to be restored in the next 24 hours. We deeply regret the inconvenience caused to our customers.???

rajeshkale30
27 December, 2011 09:17

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RE: Airtel customers across India wake up to network outage

It's been almost 24 hrs now and still your services are not up...I live at BOISAR and in my area there is no network at all...Airtel is a big company; it shouldn't take that long to restore services for you peolpe, seems like you people were no ready for such situation...its sad!!

pratikpatil06@...
27 December, 2011 11:00

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RE: Airtel customers across India wake up to network outage

I am surprised that Airtel being such a large organisation do not have a Backup plan. A separate set of servers located in a different city are generally activated in the event of natural calamity or disaster. I hope Airtel takes note of this and puts couple of backup servers in place.

nehalps
27 December, 2011 20:54

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