Hyderabad: Bharti Airtel’s network coverage which slumped after September has remained unrectified despite complaints. Dropped calls, missed emails, slow downloads and low connectivity of the service provider and other grievances have been reported by angry users who expressed their desire to shift to other services; many had already done so.
Mr Ajay Gandhi, founding member of Manthan Foundation, set the ball rolling with a message that said: “For the last few days, I get weird messages while speaking on the mobile phone and no call ever gets completed without dropping once or more. I now long for landlines.”
Techie Abhishek Kumar said, “There has been no signal at Banjara Hills, Begumpet or Somajiguda for two months now. When we call up customer care, they cite a network problem and assure that it will be resolved by mid-January. Should I not make calls until then?” A large number of users reportedly switched to other networks in these four months. Madhapur resident Soni Nishand said, “Airtel officials are quick to blame the location for network loss. After porting my SIM, it the network is perfectly fine.”
Airtel customer care was aware of the complaints, and had not been paying attention to them. “When I called the customer care, an official informed me that he could not attend to ‘my problem’ as they were undergoing training till the end of December. I was unable to receive calls or messages for 48 hours which makes it ‘their problem’,” said Mr Junaid Ahmed, a student from Gachibowli.
Many users stated that their internet connection was always running on the lowest bar. Mr Heera Reddy, a resident of Somajiguda, said, “I was travelling across Hyderabad, Warangal, Mahbubnagar, Medak and Karimnagar for the past two weeks on business and my calls kept getting disconnected. Though they proclaim 4G, it is like going back in time.”
Airtel’s Hyderabad office attributed it to a technical glitch. An official said, “Airtel has switched to 4G network. We have recently begun our VoLte based calling services in which calls are routed on a high speed 4G network which will reduce connection time and call drops.” He claimed that many subscribers would encounter problems this week as the network would be particularly busy during the festive weekend.
