Reliance Jio Faces Major Outage: Thousands of Users Affected Nationwide
On September 17, 2024, Reliance Jio – India’s largest telecom company – was subject to an extensive outage, which experienced a service failure nationwide. The outage affected thousands of subscribers. The technical issue began to affect users at around 11:15 am and generated 10,000 or more complaints on Down Detector, a social platform used to track outages. While some of the complaints described the inability to use mobile internet, there were other reports of the inability to use JioFiber broadband; however, the majority of user complaints reported a complete loss of mobile signal.
Outage User Reports
Approximately 65% of Down Detector out-of-service complaints were distributed in regards to total signal loss,, while there were other reports that included mobile internet (19%) and JioFiber (16%) technical service outages. The provider’s urban areas were disproportionately affected, with cities including Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore providing the worst user outages.
Social Media Reactions
Once users became aware of the outages, social media proved to be an immediate outlet for users demonstrating their frustration using the hashtag #JioDown. Many users exhibited behaviors typical of bullying, sharing memes and complaints about Jio’s service. Some subscribers reported being completely unable to place calls, send messages, or access Jio’s apps and services.
Cause of the Outage
When outages occur intermittently, the impact on reliability in the service area may be minimized; however, in this case, Reliance Jio did not have a public response immediately following the incident. Some sources speculated a service interruption was due to a “technical issue” with multiple reports of a potential fire at a Jio data center, which may have contributed. A spokesperson later assessed that the data center technical issues were resolved, and services were restored “gradually throughout the day”.
Impact of the Outage
Another significant aspect of the failure was Reliance Jio’s being the provider of telecom infrastructure, and the reality of outages affecting tens of millions of their subscribers offers significant collateral. Even though there were outages, customers remain reassured of Reliance Jio messaging them that incidents of this type, and others would be carefully evaluated to enact change and remedy actions to mitigate future outages.
