System failure leaves Vodafone Idea subscribers fuming
| Date :16-Oct-2020 |
Affected subscribers of Vodafone Idea (VI) congregated at one of its outlets in the city on Thursday morning.
Business Bureau :
Lakhs of Vodafone Idea users across the State were taken by surprise on Thursday morning when their mobile data service was inexplicably down for hours. Students and those working from home among others were severely affected. Besides, many students appearing for various on-line examinations also bore the brunt of the technical snag developed in the telecommunication system of the country’s leading network providers. Adding to the woes, the customer care mobile number of the service provider was also not reachable for a couple of hours.
The majority of the subscribers were complaining about ‘no date service’ while others were also highlighting mobile network connectivity issues from early morning hours. In an attempt to resolve the issue, a large number of parents and students were seen rushing the local offices of Vodafone Idea in Central Avenue Dharampeth, Byramji Town, Unthkhana, etc. in the city right from 8.00 am but to no avail as most of these shops were closed. Some of the furious subscribers were seen making futile attempts to contact Vodafone Idea authorities from mobile phones of other service providers. The state of confusion prevailed for three to four hours throwing all the on-line activities out of order. While the students missed their on-line classes, on-line examinations, businessmen could not carry out on-line money transactions.
“My son was supposed to appear in the on-line examination today morning. But because of lack of internet connectivity, he missed it completely. We do not know whether he would get another chance to appear in the examination or not,” one of the parents shared his concern with The Hitavada requesting not to disclose his identity. In the current situation when schools, colleges and tuition classes are closed due to the unprecedented coronavirus, virtual classes are the only means of education for which internet coverage is a must. A student taking on-line classes for entrance examinations said, he missed a crucial portion of his studies on Thursday morning because of the system failure. “There was no network coverage in all the mobile phones we have in our family. Initially we thought there might be some problem in our area so I went to my friend’s place. But he was also facing a similar problem,” said Naveen Jadhav. Another subscriber who runs a small scale industry said, he could not perform on-line money transactions for more than three hours.
“My mobile banking application was not working which affected some of my business deals. As of now we are solely dependent on mobile banking and such system failures are not justifiable,” he said adding that the company should be held accountable for the failure. When contacted, the mobile phones senior authorities of the company were either switched off or they did not pick up the call. But the customer care executives at the local outlets of the company said, the incessant rains in Mumbai and Pune caused the failure. They accepted that there was some technical snag in the system that affected only ‘some’ postpaid subscribers in many parts of the state.
The company executives also claimed that it was a temporary phase that would be resolved in three to four hours. Apart from this, a message apparently circulated by the company on social media attributed the system failure to power failure along with heavy rains in Mumbai and Pune where crucial network installation of the company are located. There is a sizable number of subscribers of the Vodafone Idea network in the city comprising students, businessmen and professionals. Vodafone Idea has repositioned itself as ‘VI’.