Telecom companies’ retailers are giving away goods ranging from wheat flour to plastic buckets and mugs free to draw into their fold the 1.5 crore customers of Aircel, which has declared bankruptcy and has wound down its operations.
A couple of telecom operators even hired marriage halls in key residential areas in Chennai and launched door-to-door campaigns to get Aircel customers to migrate to their networks without any hassle.
Some operators have even roped in college students to entice their friends to migrate from Aricel, sources said.
After Aircel filed for bankruptcy, a large numbers of its customers have ported to other operators.
Of around 35 lakh Aircel customers across the country, many of them in Tamil Nadu, nearly 15 lakh have migrated to Airtel; 10 lakh to Vodafone; and 5 lakh to BSNL. The pace of migration has increased every day, sources said.
An official of a large telecom company said the freebies are being offered mainly in districts where Aircel has a large customer base. The retailers are are giving these sops on their own and not on instructions from the management.
Manoj Murali, Hub CEO – Kerala and Tamil Nadu, Bharti Airtel, said customers who wish to join its network can walk into any of its one lakh retail outlets or Airtel stores and port in seamlessly. “With nearly 15 lakh Aircel customers coming into our fold, our total customer base crossed 2 crore in Tamil Nadu,” he told BusinessLine .
A Vodafone official said some of its kiosks are working 24/7 to ensure Aircel customers are migrated to its network without any hassles.
An official in BSNL Tamil Nadu Zone said that given the huge demand in the southern districts for porting by Aircel customers, a number of kiosks have been set up all over the State (excluding Chennai, which comes under BSNL Chennai Telephones).
However, porting out to other operators has not been easy for Aircel customers, who have complained of delays in getting the Unique Porting Code, which is required for the migration. Once the code is available, customers automatically migrate to other networks.
“It is Aircel’s responsibility to give the Code,” said an employee at an Airtel outlet. “However, customers blame us for the delay in getting the code and complain that they are unable to migrate to our network. We need to explain the entire process of porting, but it is difficult to persuade them. We are having a tough time.”