Reliance Jio, incumbent players to meet Trai on the issue of inter-connection

To resolve the dispute on the issue of inter-connecting points between Reliance Jio and incumbent telecom operators such as Airtel, Vodafone and Idea, Telecom regulatory authority of India (Trai) has called a meeting of telecom operators. Reliance Jio, which commercially launched its services on September 5, has accused incumbent players like Bharti Airtel and Vodafone of not releasing sufficient inter-connection ports, while industry body Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has said to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) that incumbents are not obliged to entertain inter-connect requests that are anti-competitive. It has sought PMO’s intervention to restore fair competition. COAI said that incumbent operators are in no position by way of network or financial resources to terminate volumes of traffic that are markedly asymmetric.

COAI Director General Rajan S Mathews said that before giving inter-connection to Reliance Jio, the operators need clarity on whether the services of the new entrant are now commercial and if it is so, the company cannot offer free service for more than 90 days, anything after that becomes tariff and they will have to start charging customers after that. He further said that Trai will also have to clarify on inter-connection charge which the Jio has fixed at 14 paise, but telecom operators have challenged it in the court. Even if Jio pay 14 paise, telecom operators will lose 16-18 paise because the call termination cost is 32 paise. Mathews said that when network starts getting crowded because of heavy traffic coming from Jio, the telecom operators will naturally have to priorities calls, adding that this is because spectrum is limited and hence, networks are not flexible to take the asymmetric load. The volume of calls will start congesting network and in that case, telecom operators will start losing 43-46 paise per call if their existing customer is unable to connect an outgoing call due to an incoming call from Jio network.

On other side, Reliance Jio has said its services are free till December 31, following which consumers will charged as per tariff plans that include free voice calls. It has complained that incumbent carriers have provided it less than 4 per cent of the required ports in the first year, due to which over 65 per cent of calls to networks of the top three operators are falling through. Further, Jio has requested Trai to take action against incumbent telecom operators for purportedly denying adequate capacity leading to call failures in its network during the trial run.