In the last 25 days of the national lockdown, one of the most crucial aspects of business continuity and seamless communication have been telecom networks. Despite disproportionate load—either due to corporate demands with all meetings being on VC, or individual demand for a sudden rise in demand for entertainment content, telcos in India have been able to address the rise in demand adequately. To maintain the quality of networks and ensure seamless connectivity amid Covid-19, Airtel as a leading telecom operator has taken the lead in advancing investments, collaboration with industry and even providing broadband connections to consumers at this hour. The telco giant has ramped up its network remotely to add capacity to handle data surge. Putting consumers first, Airtel is offering new connections required at homes at the fastest possible pace.
Home broadband customers are now upgrading to faster speeds and larger quota plans to support work from home and study for home needs. The field staff ensures that mobile and broadband network nodes/sites are fault free and breakdowns are attended to and fixed at the earliest. “In critical locations like MSC and data centre, operations are being manned 24×7 with uninterrupted power availability. Airtel’s NOC—network operating centre— which is the nerve centre for the entire network operations, is being run seamlessly by Airtel employees and partners using high end WFH solutions.
Also, Airtel is using advanced cloud installations to help support the traffic and launch soft capacity,” Randeep Sekhon, Chief Technology Officer at Airtel told The Daily Guardian. Airtel has done software-based expansion for companies that needed faster broadband or bigger pipes for enterprise location or at homes. Through its advanced infrastructure, Airtel is also supporting the government’s Aarogya app and for tracking Covid-19 patients. Also, it joined hands with Apollo Hospitals Group to provide a free digital self-assessment test on Airtel Thanks app to enable its customers to check their Covid-19 risk profile. Airtel has a full-fledged contingency plan in place to deal with any event.
This includes quarantining any of the company’s critical network operating centres and call centres, among others. The company began with setting up the business contingency plan (BCP) mode to manage the surge in bandwidth as more people increasingly start to work from home following the lockdown. Gopal Vittal, Chief Executive Officer of Bharti Airtel and South Asia, in his recent letter to customers has said that the company is going to keep providing its 1 Gbps internet speed broadband plan.
