Indian incumbent telcos like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular have rejected Reliance Jio’s demand for more points of interconnections (PoIs). The telcos through COAI said that they already provided the 4G entrant with enough interconnect capacity to meet the usual demand of 15 to 20 million customers.
Rajan S. Mathews, Director General, COAI, in response to Jio’s August 12 letter, said that the members of COAI have already provided Reliance Jio with enough interconnect capacity to meet the usual demand of 15 to 20 million customers.
“We understand Reliance Jio presently has approximately 2 to 3 million customers using their network?. Hence, we are unable to substantiate Reliance Jio's claim for additional capacity,” Mathews said.
The latest statement from COAI will further fuel the ongoing spat between Jio and incumbent telcos for interconnection points, even as the regulator promises a quick action to resolve this issue.
COAI’s statement is response to Jio's August 12 letter to RS Sharma, chairman, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). In the letter, Jio, had asked the regulator to take legal action against the top telcos for violating licence terms by not providing enough interconnection points,
Jio had said that the continued denial and delay in the provisioning of points of interconnect (PoIs) by dominant incumbent telecom service providers is unlawful, and actionable for appropriate legal action, as prescribed in the licence agreement applicable regulations.
Jio had said that denying inter-connection was a blatant breach of the licence agreement. It had also said that these telcos were sabotaging its entry by not providing enough PoIs, thereby forcing it to delay a commercial launch.
Indian incumbent telcos through GSM body COAI had on Friday last week claimed that Reliance Jio was trying to poach their customers under the test launch and was running full-fledged commercial operations in the guise of a trial.
The body had reiterated that Jio was choking networks of other telecom operators with the help of it 1.5 million customers that are generating huge data and voice traffic.
