Bharti Airtel Hits Back At Reliance Jio for Trying to Mislead Trai on IUC Charges

Indian telecom leader, Bharti Airtel has accused Reliance Jio of trying to mislead the telecom authorities to bring down the interconnect usage charge (IUC) through a misinformation campaign. Just yesterday, Reliance Jio alleged Airtel says that the latter is trying to ‘create a smokescreen to hide its ill-gotten profits’ under the current IUC method.

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However, Airtel on Tuesday alleged that Jio is ‘exaggerating and distorting’ the figures of India’s oldest telecom operators, thus far, making false claims to mislead the telecom authorities and even public to turn policy in its favour. Airtel also urged to the telecom operator as not to get “swayed by such falsehoods”, and decide the IUC charges based on Reliance Jio claims.

“This is nothing but a part of RJio’s sinister campaign aimed at misleading the authorities and public-at-large during the ongoing IUC consultation process,” Airtel said in a letter to Trai chairman RS Sharma, dated September 12. “Their whole objective is to bring down the IUC through the misinformation campaign, with RJio being the sole beneficiary of the lower IUC.” Economic Times has reportedly seen the copy of the letter.

In its response, Airtel said Tuesday, “We believe that RJio’s allegations are not only baseless but are part of a campaign based on falsehoods and aimed at misleading the Authorities to create policy bias in its favour… We urge the authority not to be swayed by such falsehoods.”

IUC or interconnect usage charge is a fee that the caller’s operator needs to pay to the other operator if a mobile call terminates at the latter’s network. For example, if you are an Idea customer and make a call to a Vodafone subscriber, and Idea has to pay 14 paise per minute of IUC to Vodafone for the call.