AirTel Apologizes Over Service Disruptions, Claims $ 600 Million Investments

Airtel Nigeria apologized to its over 16 million subscribers for a service disruption it experienced on Saturday as construction activities damaged its cable network.

A statement released by the Top 3 Telecom company stated, “Airtel Networks Limited sincerely apologize to our esteemed customers, especially those in Lagos, for the network disruptions which resulted in poor data and call services in the evening of yesterday, Saturday, 4 December, 2011.”

The statement further read, “Our investigations revealed that the partial network failure, which lasted for over three hours, was due to the vandalisation of our underground network fibre cables by some construction workers in Lagos mainland.”

The company also used the medium to call on the federal Government to declare telecommunications equipment ‘Critical National Infrastructure’.

Airtel said, “We want to use this medium to reiterate our strident call on the relevant governmental authorities to urgently declare telecommunications infrastructure as Critical National Infrastructure. A policy in this direction will go a long way in securing telecommunications equipment across the country and help in boosting the quality of service often negatively affected by disruptions caused by vandalization of this vital equipment.”

The company’s COO Deepak Srivastava recently disclosed that Airtel invested over $ 600 Million on expansion of network capacity and improvement of service.

However many Nigerians are yet to feel the impact of the purported investment as network service continues to be sporadic and customer service networks remain subpar.