Aircel services hit in Tamil Nadu, customers line up to port number

Crisis-hit telecom major Aircel is facing customers' fury in Tamil Nadu as its network was affected by the cessation of services by tower infrastructure provider owing to financial dispute.
With panic-stricken customers pushing for mobile number portability in large numbers, Aircel's server crashed, forcing customers to throng its limited number service centres across Tamil Nadu.
Aircel has around 15 million customers in Tamil Nadu, largest among states, out of the total 89 million customers across the country.

Aircel, promoted by Malaysian firm Maxis Communication, has been in financial crisis in the recent past due to severe competition and credit restrictions from banks. A proposed deal to merge the company with Reliance Communications also failed.

The latest issue started after one of the tower infrastructure provider, which operates 10,000 towers for Aircel in Tamil Nadu, allegedly switched off around 9,000 towers. The dispute is related to payment of a penalty to the infrastructure provider for around five to six circles closed down a few years back, said company sources.

Price wars: Reliance Jio versus the rest in telecom battle

Breaking News - For a sector seeing double-digit revenue growth over recent years, FY16 marked a reversal. At Rs 2 lakh crore, the sector grew by six% ; it was nearly double this in FY11-15. Revenue growth for the September was only 4.3% over the year-ago period.

What is hurting the sector, riding high on strong voice growth and robust subscriber addition, is intense competition over the past 18 months. What has aggravated this is the entry of Reliance Jio (RJio), offering free voice and data services, from September. Despite reduction in the number of operators in the recent mergers of Reliance Communications-Aircel and Airtel acquiring spectrum from Videocon, competitive intensity remains high.

Amid all this, the top three have consolidated their market shares and now account for 75% of the overall revenue pie. The September quarter number is up 200 basis points (bps) over the year-before period.
In fact, Bharti’s market share at 33% is at a seven-year high. Among the others, Vodafonehas held on to its share of about 23.4%; Idea Cellular has slid. Revenue market share for Idea was down 50 bps year-on-year in the September quarter to 18.7%, partly attributable to its decision to raise prices in the March quarter.(Read More)