Vodafone 'happy to help' rival Airtel in Mumbai
NEW DELHI: It's not just in politics that arch rivals suddenly become friends. On Friday, India's telecom sector witnessed an unusual alliance, with Vodafone demonstrating that it is "happy to help" not just its own customers but its competitor Bharti Airtel's as well.
When a major fire destroyed some of Airtel's crucial telecom switches in Mumbai, reportedly cutting off services to its subscribers for over 12 hours, the company chose to knock at Vodafone's door for assistance to migrate its customers onto Vodafone's network.
Bharti Airtel is India's largest GSM telecom services firm with 69.4 million subscribers followed by Vodafone in second place with 49.2 million. In Mumbai, however, Vodafone has 3.7 million subscribers followed by Airtel with 2.5 million.
However, despite fierce competition in one of the most lucrative telecom markets in the country, Vodafone was more than amply sympathetic towards its rival. From 11 pm onwards, Airtel's network started to slowly sputter back to life with customers receiving this message: "Welcome to the Vodafone Mumbai Network. Happy to help."
Vodafone was perhaps the logical choice as it is the only player in Mumbai with some excess capacity unlike the other GSM players BPL and MTNL. Besides, Vodafone made sure not to compromise its network quality for its own subscribers, only absorbing as much of Airtel's traffic as its own network was able to load. "At night and on weekends, office traffic dips, so we were able to take on the additional load," a Vodafone official told TOI.
Airtel on its part claims that the fire took a toll on just 20% to 25% of its network. However, the impact was reportedly severe as it was not restricted to a series of numbers or a particular geography. Airtel also said on Friday that it was a temporary disruption only in some areas of South Mumbai and certain suburbs which would be restored to normalcy soon. However, it is fairly obvious that had it been so simple, it would not have been forced to turn to its competitor for help, implying that the disruption of services was indeed severe and widespread.
On Saturday, Airtel issued another statement saying that 90% of the affected part of its network services is now up and running. "We have also proactively rerouted calls to ensure continued service. Also, majority of the impacted customers were not charged for the calls made. The situation in the affected areas will see improvements over the next few days and customers will soon be able to enjoy 100% network experience. We would like to thank our customers for their understanding and support," it wrote.
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder