Aircel’s bankruptcy filing leaves 84 million subscribers in dismay

Aircel has filed for bankruptcy and it has been revealed by the company in an official statement. The bankruptcy application has been filed for Aircel Cellular Limited, Aircel Limited, and Dishnet Wireless Limited. This is said to be the start of the bankruptcy process and it will not be the confirmed outcome of the process.

A representative will be appointed by the court to manage the bankruptcy process and find out a way through which the telco can pay its debt. If the process does not work, then the company will be declared bankrupt and the assets that it owns will be used to get back the maximum amount of money that can be recovered.

In the official statement, Aircel states that it requests cooperation from subscribers and partners. It states that it would strive hard to offer uninterrupted service connectivity to the subscribers. The bankruptcy filing has come at a time when the telecom segment in the country is going through drastic changes. Jio's entry has made all the telecom service providers in India to slash their tariff plans, a move that has hit hard on their revenues. Eventually, the smaller companies such as Aircel find it tough to compete.

As of December 2017, Aircel had around 84 million subscribers. Over the past few weeks, many Aircel subscribers ported to the other operators such as Airtel and Reliance Jio. As the bankruptcy filing has come up, we can expect more Aircel subscribers to port to the other networks. The subscribers who remain with Aircel during the difficult phase might continue receiving services until the end of the bankruptcy process, which is estimated to take a year's time.

Given that almost 84 million Aircel subscribers will have to move out to other networks in the coming months, the existing players such as Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular will make a great level of promotion to grab hold of the massive subscriber base of Aircel. Also, the telco is said to have approached TRAI in order to fasten the process of porting to other networks so that its subscribers are not affected by the bankruptcy filing.