No Idea! Customers are furious in Kerala

Kochi: Idea Cellular Ltd, which boasts of a 41 per cent market share in the mobile network in Kerala, suffered a major technical glitch in the state resulting in an outage for close to six hours on Saturday. Airtel  users were also hit by the outage. Both Idea and Airtel did not give the exact reason for the glitch till late in the day.

Highly placed sources clarified that the glitch was related to the main Mobile Switching Centre (MSC) which is the centrepiece of a network switching subsystem (NSS). Since MSC is mostly associated with communications switching functions, such as call set-up, release, and routing the issue resulted in a total outage.

MSCs also undertakes routing SMS messages, conference calls, fax, and service billing as well as interfacing with other networks Customers complained that they were not able to make calls even to emergency numbers. Many  claimed that they were able to access Internet through their 3G connection, but couldn't make calls. Though Idea claimed that the issue was resolved in the evening,  many failed to make calls. Officials said that it was due to too many people accessing the network.

In Kochi,  the app-based online taxi service was also hit by the outage. Close to 600 drivers are  the users  of Idea, claimed Kerala Online Taxi Drivers Association. Many users flayed Idea and announced that they were  planning to port their number to other service providers.

The issue was first reported around 10.30 a.m. and lasted throughout the day. Irked users protested at Idea's corporate office at  Vyttila and Kakkanad in Kochi and some took to Facebook and Twitter to register their protest. Police help was sought  at Idea's office at Vyttila to control the situation. Later in the day,  Idea's official Facebook page claimed that the issue was due to a power outage.

Sources claim that the main optical network fibre in Kerala was  cut. The main server at Idea's master switch facility at  Kakkanad was also down. Idea later offered free talk time to its prepaid customers in  a desperate attempt to woo them.  “As an acknowledgment to the support of our customers we have extended free local/STD calling of 100 minutes, valid for 48 hours starting on Saturday midnight,” a text message read.