BHUBANESWAR: Jio mobile users who ported from Tata Docomo and have the number starting with 9238 series in Odisha woke up on Saturday to find their cell phones inoperational.
The outage that apparently began around 11 pm on Friday continues when this report was filed on Saturday afternoon leaving thousands of customers in the lurch.
Initially, Jio service users having Tata Docomo's 9238 series numbers did not get any call or message from Jio numbers. While the issue persisted for hours, the users couldn't make calls and even send texts.
Though some users had WhatsApp calls as the internet was working, many others complained of network issues and poor network connectivity. Some users The New Indian Express spoke to alleged they were virtually disconnected from the world as they failed to make some urgent calls and connect to their dear ones.
"I wanted to speak to a doctor in the morning for my health issues, but couldn't make the call. I came to know about the problem when a couple of my friends made WhatsApp calls stating that direct calls to my number were not possible," said B Pradhan, a resident of Unit III, Bhubaneswar.
On the other hand, callers, who were repeatedly trying to get through, got voice messages like this number is not in service and the dialled number doesn't exist. There were, however, no issues with calls from Airtel numbers.
"Occasional outages for a short duration are understandable. But such an issue with only ported numbers is unwarranted. This seems to be the monopoly of Jio and it is unethical," pointed out Pradhan.
Sources said this kind of mobile outage is relatively rare. It happened only after the 9238 series numbers of Odisha circle were allotted to Madhya Pradesh. Though all Tata Docomo users merged with the Airtel network in 2019, the number series was allotted to MP recently, the sources said.
A Jio spokesperson said the outage seemed to affect only a handful of subscribers’ text and voice services, but it did not affect their mobile data. "It has nothing to do with the Jio service. The issue cropped up due to the allotment of number series to another state from the Odisha circle. The issues have been resolved," he added.