New Delhi: 

Airtel subscribers in Tamil Nadu and Kerala faced hours of frustration on Tuesday, May 13, as voice call services went down without warning. The disruption, which began around 7:00 pm, left users across cities like Chennai, Coimbatore, and parts of Kerala unable to make or receive calls. While mobile data stayed functional, the inability to use regular voice calls led to widespread complaints and confusion across social media.

By the next morning, May 14, services were mostly back to normal. Downdetector, which had seen a flood of complaints during the outage, showed a sharp decline in user-reported issues.

Airtel confirms temporary network glitch

Airtel was quick to acknowledge the situation as backlash built up online. In a statement shared with The Hindu, an Airtel spokesperson said, “We regret to inform that Airtel is currently facing a temporary network disruption in certain areas of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Our technical teams are diligently working to address the issue and restore services as quickly as possible.”

By early May 14, many users confirmed that voice calling had resumed, with Downdetector showing a drop in complaints.

Massive spike in complaints across southern cities

According to The Hindu, the outage caused a sharp spike in service complaints on platforms like X (formerly Twitter), with users tagging Airtel and demanding answers. Cities like Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Madurai were also highlighted in Downdetector’s live heat map as impacted zones.

At the peak of the issue around 9:00 pm, Downdetector had logged over 8,400 complaints from users struggling with dropped calls and call failures.

Data worked, but calls failed

Interestingly, the disruption didn’t affect mobile internet services. Users could still access WhatsApp and other internet-based platforms, allowing many to fall back on VoIP (voice over internet protocol) apps to stay connected.

The telecom provider hasn’t yet disclosed what caused the disruption or if a full-scale fix has been deployed to prevent similar outages.

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