Connectivity absolutely essential; taken steps to ensure customers stay connected: Airtel CEO

Stressing that connectivity is absolutely essential amid the "growing uncertainty", Airtel said it has strengthened IVR systems to address most of subscribers' needs, and taken a slew of measures to ensure that customers and nation stay connected.

In a note to its subscribers, Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal said that despite the challenges in fulfilment given the national lockdown, the company will do its best to arrange installations, at the earliest possible time, for those who need 1 Gbps Airtel Xstream Fiber.

"We know how critical it is to have a consistent and seamless experience while working from home. If you would like to get 1 Gbps Airtel Xstream Fiber - please let us know here. While we are facing challenges in fulfilment given the national lock-down, we will arrange for installation as soon as we can," Vittal said.

He said that the company is proud of its team which continues to be in the field, risking their safety, to make sure that customers and the nation stays connected.

"Millions of livelihoods have been shattered and there is growing uncertainty. While we don't know how this will evolve, what we do know is that in this period, connectivity is absolutely essential," he said.

The company is doing everything it can to fix problems that some people may be facing, he said.

Outlining the measures that have been taken by the company, he said, "With our call centers running at reduced capacity, we have strengthened our IVR (Interactive Voice Response) to address a majority of use cases".

"For example, you can now recharge and make payments through the IVR and even raise a network complaint," he said.

All field employees are taking necessary precautions (masks, gloves, sanitizers) and maintaining the highest level of hygiene.

He said that over the last year, the company has worked hard on improving video and voice app experiences, download speeds, as well as latency – all of which are vital to work from home.

"...Airtel has been recognized in April as the best network on all of these dimensions by Open Signal. Open Signal has a measurement system that is based on one of the largest pool of crowd sourced data, using over 8 million customers," he said in the recent note to subscribers.