Bengaluru: Just days after a nationwide disruption, Airtel users in Bengaluru and several other cities faced another major outage on Sunday afternoon. The disruption, which lasted for hours, sparked frustration among customers who reported problems with calls, mobile internet, and complete service blackouts.
Outage peaks around noon
According to DownDetector, a portal that tracks technology outages, complaints surged around 12:15 pm with as many as 7,109 reports registered. Apart from Bengaluru, users from Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Surat, Ahmedabad, and other cities were also affected.
The outage led to widespread inconvenience, especially for users who rely heavily on mobile networks for work and essential communication.
Airtel response
Airtel acknowledged the issue through its official Airtel Cares platform, attributing the disruption to temporary connectivity issues.
“We apologise for the inconvenience. The issue you’re facing appears to be due to a temporary connectivity disruption and is expected to be resolved within 1 hour. Once that time has passed, please restart your mobile phone to restore services. Thank you,” the company said in a message to customers.
Gradual recovery, lingering complaints
By 1 pm, DownDetector showed a decline in outage reports, suggesting that services were beginning to recover. However, by 4 pm, more than 150 complaints were still being logged.
Among those affected, 51 per cent reported signal issues, 32 per cent faced mobile internet problems, and 17 per cent experienced total blackout, data from DownDetector revealed.
Users vent frustration online
The disruption quickly became a trending topic on social media, with users criticising the company for not sending prior notifications.
“Airtel internet down in Bangalore today? Anyone else facing this? @airtelindia, at least notify users about outages instead of leaving us clueless!” one user posted on X (formerly Twitter).
Another wrote, “Airtel postpaid is down since last 6 hours, not able to make call or access internet. @airtel works with zero accountability and you can’t talk to customer care. @TRAI you should at least take some action.”
Similar outage earlier this week
This latest outage follows a major disruption reported on August 18, when Airtel, along with Jio and Vodafone-Idea to a smaller extent, faced prolonged service failures. On that day, DownDetector recorded over 3,600 reports of Airtel users experiencing problems around 4:30 pm, before gradually declining later in the night.
Conclusion
The back-to-back outages have raised concerns over the reliability of mobile services in India, with users demanding greater accountability from telecom operators. While Airtel has assured customers of swift resolutions, repeated disruptions continue to affect millions of subscribers across the country.