Tech flaw disrupts Airtel service for hrs

Hundreds if not thousands of Airtel subscribers could not use their phones during peak working hours when the network suffered an outage on Saturday. The outage lasted up to four hours in certain pockets of the city.

In a statement, an Airtel spokesperson said, “A technical downtime has affected our network in certain regions of Hyderabad city resulting in partial disruption of services. During this period our customers had limited access to mobile services in parts of the city.”

It is learnt that the company was carrying out routine software maintenance after which there was a technical snag.

Phones went offline from about 9 am till noon when the glitch was fixed. A company executive said that network sites in Begumpet, Banjara Hills and Jubilee Hills were affected. However, Airtel subscribers from other parts of the city reported downtime.

“It was just a network downtime, something that is most unlikely but can happen due to unexpected reasons. A team was put together immediately and the issue was resolved by noon,” a company executive said.

It affected both 2G and 3G services.

Telangana BJP spokesperson Krishna Sagar Rao tweeted, “There seems to be a huge issue with Airtel network since this morning. No phone calls are going through.”