Above: The entire electric cabling and panel in the basement of Peninsula Chambers was destroyed. (below): People had to be evacuated



Services of cellphone operator Airtel were disrupted after two of its servers located in Peninsula Chambers at Peninsula Corporate Park, Lower Parel, was damaged in a major fire that broke out at the business plaza early Friday morning.

A power transformer located in the basement of the building exploded and the fire spread to a portion of the first and second floor of Peninsula Chambers, the business plaza which houses several corporate offices including Airtel. Nobody was hurt in the fire. Airtel services in south Mumbai were disrupted due to the server damage. According to sources, the server at Peninsula Chambers catered to Airtel’s cell operations from Andheri to south Mumbai. The company is making frantic efforts to shift the operational load to Airtel’s server in Mahape to normalise operations.

According to eyewitnesses, a spark in the transformers led to a fire at 8.15 am on Friday. According to the fire brigade, the fire then spread to the first and second floors of the building. The transformer was kept in the basement of the building, and the fire spread to the switch gear and cables.

A security person who noticed the fire called the fire brigade which reached within minutes. According to P D Kargupikkar, deputy chief fire officer, there was a thick blanket of black smoke in the basement which hindered the fire-fighting operation to some extent. Eight fire engines, five water tankers, two ambulances and one breathing apparatus had to be called in to tackle the fire. While investigations are on about the cause of the fire, Kargupikkar said that the entire electric cabling and panel in the basement of the building were destroyed. When asked what could be the cause of teh fire, “Overheating of the transformer, as also some spark in the switch gear, could be possible causes. We will have to investigate into who the last person to leave the premises last night, and whether that person had switched off the necessary switches.” Although fire officials are convinced that fire-fighting measures were not maintained in the building, officials from Peninsula Corporate Park denied the allegation. “We had everything in place. The fire could not have broken out due to non-maintenance,” said an officer from Peninsula Corporate Park.



Fire at Airtel's Mumbai office to hit revenues



The fire that hit Bharti Airtel’s office in Mumbai on Friday will impact the revenues of India’s largest operator. The company has been re-routing calls through the network of Vodafone Essar till it restores its own facilities.



Besides making payments to Vodafone for this, Bharti will also have to spend money in re-starting operations at the Lower Parel building that also houses its BlackBerry server, data services and Home Location Register (HLR), which is the database of all mobile subscribers.



“Airtel has shifted traffic to Vodafone, which will take as many subscribers as the capacity permits, without affecting its own users. Vodafone offered its services last night,” sources told ET. However, the company refused to quantify the financial impact due to the fire that downed Airtel networks for over 12 hours in the financial capital. “Revenue impact is trivial compared to customer experience and satisfaction,” a senior company official told ET.



“We restored services in the shortest possible time. We needed access to the building to gauge the impact of the fire before we could implement the disaster recovery plan and the access was blocked for a considerable period of time,” he said.



For disaster recovery, Bharti has shifted equipment to Mahape near Mumbai. “We implemented disaster recovery services and had the equipment shifted to a redundancy site and 90% of the affected part of our network services are now up and running. Calls made by pre-paid subscribers while the disaster recovery site was being established will not be charged,” the official said.



The building caught fire early on Friday by a short circuit in the common power cables, belonging to Tata Power. “As one of our offices is housed in the same complex, some of our customers in some parts of Mumbai got affected. As soon as the fire was brought under control, our engineers took prompt action and worked round the clock,” the company said in a statement on Saturday.



“The situation in the affected areas will see improvements over the next few days and customers will soon be able to enjoy 100% network experience. We would like thank our customers for their understanding and support,” Bharti added.