Users across mobile networks in India experienced a prolonged outage on Monday, August 18 — starting majorly with Airtel, then to a lesser degree with Jio and Vodafone-Idea.
What Airtel said on network being down
The issue was first flagged in Delhi-NCR before 5 pm, and later in Mumbai and Bengaluru too, spreading across India soon after.
“Our customers from Delhi-NCR are experiencing some voice calling issues for the past hour or so," a statement by the company read, “Significant part of the issue has already been resolved and our engineers are at work to resolve this fully. We deeply regret any inconvenience.”
Extent of Airtel outage
- Downdetector, a portal that monitors tech glitches, saw over 3,600 reports of Airtel outages at around 4:30 pm on Monday, as against a baseline of less than 15.
- There was a gradual decline to less than 150 reports by 10.30 pm.
- Customers were now getting messages from Airtel saying services were restored.
Others affected too: Reports of outages from Jio and Vi customers were also higher than the average, but coming down — from a peak of around 200 reports to around 130.
{{/usCountry}}Others affected too: Reports of outages from Jio and Vi customers were also higher than the average, but coming down — from a peak of around 200 reports to around 130.
{{/usCountry}}Jio shared a press statement that said its own network did not have issues.
“We would like to clarify that the Jio network has been operating normally throughout the day with no operational issues. All Jio-to-Jio calls and calls from Jio to other non-impacted networks have been working seamlessly. The only problem observed was in calls made by Jio numbers to a specific impacted network customers, due to downtime on that network’s end. This did not affect Jio customers calling within the Jio network or connecting to any other networks. We assure our customers that the Jio network continues to perform optimally, and services remain fully available,” the official said.
Also read | Jio and Vodafone-Idea down after Airtel outage
Most reported Airtel outages were related to mobile phones on Downdetector, followed by signal and mobile internet issues.
Areas affected by Airtel outage
A Downdetector map of areas affected by the Airtel outage showed Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Guwahati and Madurai also in the red, meaning much higher than usual complaints from across all corners of the country. Cities in central India were no different on this count, as of 6 pm, Monday, August 18.
“@Airtel_Presence @airtelindia services are completely down. Unable to make or receive calls and even messages are not working. This is causing serious inconvenience. Please resolve the network outage immediately and confirm ETA for restoration,” a user wrote on X, to which Airtel responded saying it was working on restoration.
Another user wrote, “If you are an #Airtel user, and unable to make calls, you're not alone. Seems like a widespread outage.
Connectivity of @airtelindia facing serious issues. Don’t panic if you are not able to get in touch with your loved ones. Just be patient. #Airtel #Mobile," one user wrote on X as #AirtelDown trended on the platform.
Another user added that it is not just a localised issue in Delhi-NCR, adding that Airtel network is down across the entire country.
“Ported from Jio to Airtel due to internet issues, but facing even bigger problems now. Not able to use data while on calls & no proper response from customer care. Really disappointing!” an X user complained.