Airtel on fire, rival Vodafone to the rescue

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The basement of Peninsula Chambers, in Peninsula Corporate Park in Lower Parel, Mumbai, caught fire and soon spread to some of the upper floors but was quickly brought under control by the firemen.

The fire was caused by a suspected electrical short circuit and damaged the telecom major's network towers, disrupting telecommunication services.

Though Airtel said only about 25 percent of its subscribers in Mumbai were affected and it was "confident of soon restoring normalcy," yet, tens of thousands of Airtel subscribers in Mumbai claimed they were unable to make or receive calls and kept getting "Emergency Calls Only' messages on their mobile phone screens on Friday. Many also complained that Airtel customer call service numbers were unreachable.

However, by Saturday afternoon, many of Airtel subscribers found that normal services were restored on their numbers. An Airtel official, on conditions of anonymity, said the company had requested rival Vodafone-Essar to allow routing of Airtel numbers on its network in areas where it had surplus capacity while the repair works were being carried out.

By Sunday night, normal network services were restored to most Airtel subscribers. "When a disaster of such a magnitude occurs then a lot needs to be done to restore normalcy. We have to reconfigure all our servers, which will take a few days," the Airtel official said.

The official, however, refused to quantify the financial damage the fire has caused. Financial impact cannot be compared to customer experience and satisfaction, he said.

In Mumbai circle, Airtel has 2.5 million customers whereas Vodafone has 3.7 million subscribers.