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Airtel down again: Airtel faces widespread outage, disrupting mobile and internet services
Airtel suffered a nationwide outage, leaving thousands of users across major cities without mobile and internet services.
Bharti Airtel, one of India’s largest telecom operators, suffered a nationwide disruption on Saturday, leaving thousands of customers without mobile and internet services for several hours. Reports of service failures began climbing around 12:15 p.m., according to Downdetector, which tracks digital outages. Within minutes, more than 7,000 complaints were logged, with users citing mobile network problems, patchy internet connectivity and, in many cases, complete blackouts.
The outages stretched across major urban centers including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata, Downdetector’s live map showed. Customers in Ahmedabad, Pune, Jaipur and Patna also reported interruptions, highlighting the scale of the disruption.
Of those affected, 51 percent said they faced “No Signal” issues, 32 percent reported problems with mobile internet, and 17 percent experienced a “Total blackout,” meaning they could not access any Airtel service.
Frustrated customers quickly took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to share complaints about dropped calls, data failures and the sudden loss of connectivity. Several noted that the timing of the outage — midday on a Saturday — disrupted both personal and professional communication.
Airtel had not released a statement by late afternoon. In past incidents, the company has attributed disruptions to technical glitches or fiber cuts, though customers are awaiting clarification on the cause of Saturday’s breakdown.
The company has grappled with similar issues in recent months. In June and July, service interruptions affected broadband and mobile data in multiple states. Saturday’s outage was the second major disruption this quarter, raising fresh concerns about the reliability of India’s second-largest telecom provider.
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