Aircel customers across Tamil Nadu have expressed concern that they are not able to port out of the telecom service provider. Some of them said that connectivity has also been an issue for the last few days and calls are getting dropped randomly.
Dinesh Kumar, a techie, said, “After I read that the company will file for bankruptcy at the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), I sent an SMS to the service provider to port out and still have not got the authorisation code.”
Customers said that every time they send an SMS to 1900, they got a reply saying, “Dear customer, Please send the request in the below format. Port <10 digit mobile number>.” But despite sending the SMS in the said format, there has been no response.
More than fifteen customers with whom The Hindu spoke to said that the porting issue has to be addressed immediately. “Today, all services, including gas, bank accounts and Aadhaar, are linked to mobile. So this needs to be fixed, or else several customers will suffer,” Mr. Kumar said.
Bad network
Ananya Murthy (name changed), a senior software professional, said she faced issues such as bad network coverage. “Despite paying 3G charges, I could not avail myself of the services. When I asked for porting out, they declined the request citing reasons like bills not cleared. I paid the bill and despite that it showed the amount was outstanding,” she said. “Finally I had to write to Aircel appellate authority and got it done,” she said.
K. Sankara Narayanan, Head – SBU (South), Aircel, said that it is completely wrong to say that customers are not able to port out. “Customers can port out after paying their bills to date without any restriction from Aircel as mandated by law. But, due to the sudden rise in port out requests, our infrastructure is facing capacity issues. Customers can get port out authorisation UPC code within 6 hours of sending SMS. Network connectivity is impacted as many of our critical input suppliers are also our competitors. Aircel is pursuing the legal options.”
Tamil Nadu is a crucial market for Aircel and the firm has a customer base of 1.5 crore here. According to TRAI annual report 2015-16, Aircel has a subscriber base of over 87.09 million in the country.
Another source at Aircel said the firm has not even applied to NCLT. He said that even in the likelhood of winding up, the law has provided a mandatory 30-day notice period to customers to port out. During that period, customers can easily port out. “The anxieties are all artificially injected by competitors for gaining business,” he said.
