A big mobile network went down on Monday, which made things very hard for millions of people in India. Airtel, Reliance Jio, and Vodafone-Idea, three of the biggest phone companies, were all down for hours. The power outage started in Delhi-NCR and swiftly expanded to other parts of the country. People couldn’t text, call, or get online.
Airtel was one of the three companies that lost the most. At its height, the outage-tracking site Downdetector had more than 3,600 user reports, which was a lot more than typical. The company’s official statement, which came out shortly after the outage started, indicated there was a problem. Airtel’s spokesperson said, “Our customers in Delhi-NCR have had trouble making voice calls for the last hour or so.” They also claimed, “We’ve already fixed a lot of the problems, and our engineers are working on the rest.”
The outage hit Airtel the most, although other businesses also faced issues. Downdetector also said that more individuals than usual were having trouble with Jio and Vodafone-Idea. Around 200 Jio users and 130 Vodafone-Idea customers were the most unhappy. Many consumers said they couldn’t get online or make calls, which shows how terrible the service outage was.
A lot of people were angry about the outage on social media, and the hashtag #AirtelDown was popular on X (now Twitter). People who were upset related their stories, which included not being able to get in touch with family members and having difficulties with their jobs and internet banking. “Just because you use Airtel doesn’t mean you can’t make calls.” “Looks like a big outage,” someone said. Another person wrote, “I switched from Jio to Airtel because my internet wasn’t working, but now I’m having even bigger problems.”
The Downdetector map shows that the outage hit more than one place. Reports came in from people all around the country, including Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, and Guwahati. By the evening, services were slowly returning, but the event showed how important it is for mobile networks to be reliable in a country where millions of people rely their phones for everyday tasks. At the time of this writing, none of the telecom firms have disclosed what caused the widespread failure.