Aircel offers free ‘Aircel Locate’ service in Jammu and Kashmir

New Delhi/ Jammu & Srinagar, September 15, 2014: Aircel offers free location based tracking service ‘Aircel Locate’ tohelppeople locate their family and friends stranded in severe flood affected areas in Jammu & Kashmir. This free VAS service is available for all Aircel customers across India. The customers can request for the location of theirfamily members and friendsliving in J&K, without any subscription fee or prior registration to the service.

To use this service, Aircel customers will need to send anSMS LOCATE to 54654from anywhere in India. They will immediately receive the nearest known location and the latitude/Longitude of the requested user.

Aircel has also made its Missed call alert service free for its Aircel customers in the worst affected areas in Kashmir, such that they can be notified of any important calls they may miss.

In a major success, Aircel has restored its 2G services in most part of the Kashmir region enabling thousands of people stranded to connect with their families and friends. Aircel 2G is operating in Anantnag, Bandipora, Shopian, Kulgam, Pulwama, Srinagar, Budgam, Bonigam and Ganderbal. Aircel 3G has continued to be up and running.

The company is working with the local administration and the Army to ensure seamless connectivity on its 2G and 3G network in the region.

Aircel has offered its network to all other mobile service operators to help the people of J&K to connect with their families and friends.

In its support to help the stranded people and enable easy communication, Aircel has undertaken following initiatives:

• Mobile charging booths deployed for all stranded, to make calls free of cost.

o   The booths are equipped with handsets, sufficient talk-time and mobile charging units to enable free calls.

• Short Code Based application (SEND JK FIND TO 1299) rolled out. Wherein subscribers can send details on a toll free number and the same is being FLASHED TO ARMY TWITTER HANDLE @ADGPI THRU TWITTER TEAMS WHO ARE MANAGING ARMY HANDLE. Approx 800 request have been registered in last 24 hours.
• Aircel Credit Facility: As the markets are closed, Aircel Credit is Extended to entire base so as to enable subscriber continue talking.

o   Secondly, subscribers can also avail a top up on the loan.

o   To Support postpaid subscribers, Credit Limits enhanced upto 150 % to ensure the subscribers continue using their phones. No barring is being done.

• Grace Bucket Movement: All the subscribers from GRACE Bucket have been moved back to ACTIVE bucket without RECHARGE to enable them to start communicating.
• All the renewals on VAS (Data, WAP and VAS) have been put on hold so that the subscribers have sufficient balance for VOICE and they can connect.