Here comes the official news about Aircel. While the company keep on saying that it's still up for offering services, consumers are not ready to enjoy the service, thanks to the massive network down issue faced by them recently. Since then, Aircel started receiving a lot of MNP requests, and due to that, even the company' servers crashed. Following the massive demand, Aircel approached telecom regulator Trai to facilitate Mobile Number Portability codes for the subscribers of Aircel and Dishnet Wireless Ltd in the licensed service areas of Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir, Karnataka, Kerala, Kolkata, Mumbai, North East, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh (East) and West Bengal.
On February 22, 2018, Aircel Group comprising of Aircel and Dishnet Wireless subscribers informed that the company is undergoing deep financial stress due to various reasons which has also resulted in closing operations in six of their circles earlier.
Alongside this, Aircel Group also informed to the regulator that they have been severely impacted by their major Infra provider GTL Infra who has turned off as much as one-third of their total sites in different licensed service areas across the country. And as an emergency measure, they're working out intra-circle roaming arrangements with other telecom service provides to help the existing subscribers remain connected and at least generate a porting code.
As mentioned earlier, Aircel Group also mentioned that a large number of requests for porting, the generation of Unique Porting Codes (UPC), is also delayed due to capacity constraints in their server. Therefore to help the subscribers porting out to other networks, Aircel has requested Trai to issue suitable direction for allotting additional codes to generate UPC in the licensed service areas where Aircel has a subscriber base of over one million.
Trai will be now issuing porting codes to all Aircel subscribers, subject to a subscriber being in the network for a period of 90 days. Aircel also requested Trai to extend the validity of UPCs up to 45 days to enable hassle-free porting.
As mentioned earlier, Aircel already closed services in Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh (West) with effect from January 31, 2018. And customers in the other licensed will be eligible to port out from the network.
Trai also revealed the customers should try to utilise the unspent balance before porting out from the network. Otherwise, the amount will be given to the customers in the form of recharge coupons or plans.
