Airtel
Service Outage for 24 hours

Would like to report that Bharti Airtel has a partial service outage for voice subscribers in Delhi. For a network operator that boasts itself having one of the largest number of subscribers in the world (100 million) wth India's #1 network, having a network outage that is barring outgoing voice calls is ridiculous.

There are laws in countries like the US and Western Europe where regulatory authorities (FCC, etc) actually fine for every 15 minutes of service outage to network operators. My first complaint to Airtel at 6pm on 9th September was answered with a response that Airtel Support systems are under upgrade so staff cannot help - this will automatically recover in 6-8 hours. On contacting Airtel multiple times on 10th morning @ 2:00 am, 11:00 am & 3 pm, i keep getting an assurance that service will be restored soon. on one of the last calls, i am told that it will be atleast until midnight before i have outgoing calling available and should be patient.

In an age when cellphone service is considered an integral part of everyday business such response or non availability of redundant network equipment incase of failure is short sightedness on part of the operator.

Ericsson and Nokia Siemens who provide service in the 23 mobile circles for Airtel must be aware of standard Service Level Agreements that hold them accountable to resolve service outages within 4 hours. in this case end customers are left without service for 24 hours and there is no response from Airtel customer service on when this can be restored. on confronting as to what are the details of the technical snag in the network no details are furnished.

Having subscription to a monthly service @ ATT US, Vodafone in Europe and Airtel in India currently, i feel totally let down by the Indian operator in a developing nation. This certainly proves why Vodafone is closing the gap on market share for Airtel in the predominant circles.

Now it is left to Indian gods to get this service running. For now - long live Vodafone roaming agreements with ATT and i shall be porting my number over to Vodafone as soon as the facility is available in October.

A concerned consumer raising this in Public Interest

Company: Airtel
Country: India

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