Fire at AirTel office due to short circuit

The fire which shut down AirTel's fixed line services and mobile services for more than 12 hours yesterday was due to a short circuit at its headoffice in Chennai.

"Our networks are fully functional and our services in Tamil Nadu have been fully restored . We want to reiterate our commitment to continue providing world-class services, which we are recognised for and regret the inconvenience which they encountered for a while, last night," said K Krishnan, CEO, broadband and telephone services in a press release.

The short circuit triggered off a fire in the cabling and lead to switching off of the telephone services by AirTel as a preventive measure.

The long disruption in services was due to the delay caused in the redoing of the cabling.

"There was no damage to infrastructure or equipment.The temporary disruption in service was the result of a minor fire at the exchange," said P Swaminathan, director - mobility and CEO, Bharti Cellular Limited, Southern region in the same release.

AirTel also has its enterprise solutions and virtual private networks up and running post the disruption.

These services are essentially offered to corporates as a complete telecom solution. They are also considering setting up facilities so that there will be a back-up in case of another such emergency in the future.

They also ruled out sabotage of any kind as the fire coincided with the unification of all brands of Bharti Televentures under the umbrella brand of AirTel.