Airtel waves go up in smoke

Thousands of Airtel subscribers in the city found their cell phones had suddenly gone on the blink on Friday after a major fire broke out in the basement of the Peninsula Park commercial complex at Lower Parel in central Mumbai.

The blaze, which began before offices opened for the day and raged for over four hours, was brought under control by early afternoon. No casualties were reported. The cause of the fire was not immediately known, but fire brigade personnel said it could have been caused by a short circuit.

The fire destroyed network hardware belonging to Bharti Airtel Limited, which operates the Airtel mobile service, and a data centre of the company. As a result, Airtel’s services, including Blackberry, remain inoperational the whole day. A Bharti spokesman said the system would resume operations within three hours, but that did not happen.

A witness said offices of the telecom giant were badly affected by the fire. Several Airtel subscribers complained that their phones had stopped working. Many had to take recourse to borrowing SIM cards from friends or reverting to older phones.
Though the fire began in the basement, the flames reached up to the second floor and gutted some other offices too.

All the offices in the commercial complex, including those of the Piramal Group, Vodafone, Deustche Bank, Asian Paints, Wellspring Diagnostic Centre, advertising firm JWT, and law firm Amarchand Mangaldas, were advised to shut for the day. Electricity to the entire complex was cut off as a precautionary measure.