Many people took to social media on Thursday morning to complain that they were facing constant disruption of both broadband and mobile services from Airtel. Later, some users posted that they regained access to services.
However, several users also reported that they were yet to regain access to broadband and mobile services, hinting at a possible technical problem across the country for the carrier.
According to downdetector.in, the Airtel outage hit its peak a little after 11am after multiple users logged it into the outage detector website. Among the reports, at least 43 per cent reported a total blackout of all Airtel telecom services, while 25 per cent posted issues with mobile services alone.
Airtel outage on December 26 | downdetector.in
The latest data published by TRAI on Monday revealed that Airtel had a 33.5 per cent market share as of October 31, 2024, when it came to wireless subscribers, second only to Reliance Jio with a 39.9 per cent share.
For October, Airtel was the only private player that saw an increase in wireless subscribers. Overall, other than Airtel, only state provider BSNL posted subscriber gains.
Last week, the company also announced it received a notice from the Andhra Pradesh Department of Telecommunications (DoT), where the telecom regulatory body slapped a Rs 6.84 lakh penalty on the carrier for an alleged violation of subscriber verification norms.
The DoT notice dated December 20 further detailed that the penalty was due to an "alleged violation of terms and conditions with respect to subscriber verification norms under the license agreement, pursuant to sample CAF audit conducted by DoT for October 2024."
One day earlier, on December 19, Airtel also announced it pre-paid Rs 3,626 crores to the central DoT, "clearing all its liabilities for spectrum it had acquired in 2016."
In 2024 alone, Airtel pre-paid Rs 28,320 crores in total spectrum liabilities, the company said.
