DIBRUGARH, Feb 20 - Since early Monday afternoon, mobile services of Aircel have been severely disrupted in many parts of Assam and elsewhere in the northeast. It is gathered from reports that Aircel has defaulted in bank repayments to the tune of Rs 15,500 crore since September last year, and that the company is in the process of filing for bankruptcy.
While the financial health of mobile service providers hardly concern the layman, what has affected him today is that Aircel services are down. Worse, if someone dials an Aircel number in Assam or elsewhere in the northeast, the message from the network is that the �subscriber is busy on another call, please try after sometime.� This is a blatantly misleading message. �The least Aircel can do is to tell the dialling public that their services are down and may soon die permanently,� said an angry customer here.
It is gathered from corporate sources that the Aircel network is on way to be switched off as the Malaysian financiers of the company are no longer willing to infuse further funds into the network. The company currently earns about Rs 400 crore a month by way of revenues from subscribers. Of this, Rs 100 crore goes to other service providers by way of call termination services. The 5000 odd employees of the company (about a dozen of them are in Assam) are in for service termination within this month, the sources informed.