Reliance Jio has alleged that the continued denial of requisite interconnection capacity or PoIs by top telecom operators like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular was aimed at hindering the 4G telco’s entry into the sector, and depriving Indian customers from enjoying superior HD voice services.
The telco also said that the denial of requisite PoI’s is also in clear violation of the License conditions and TRAI regulations on quality of service by the incumbent operators.
Jio has claimed that these top telecom operators have not provided the 4G entrant with any new interconnection capacity in the last 15 days, despite repeated reminders and bilateral meetings. It said that Vodafone has provided just five operational E1s, followed by Idea and Airtel with 3 and 1 operational E1s, respectively.
“RJIL’s immediate requirement of operational interconnection capacity estimated based on transparent industry practice is of the order of 4,000 – 5,000 E1s per operator for the three incumbent operators and it is therefore apparent that at the current rate, the incumbent operators have not demonstrated any real intent to resolve this issue,” Reliance Jio said in a statement issued on Tuesday.
Considering the current working E1s, including the proposed augmentation by the incumbent operators, would still be far lesser than what is required to meet QoS parameters, more concrete action is warranted from the incumbent operators.
“RJIL hopes that the incumbent operators will enhance the PoI's sufficiently to meet their license obligation of QoS with immediate effect and maintain these parameters on an ongoing basis,” it said.
Jio said that the unavailability of new interconnection capacity was resulting in over 10 crore call failures per day between Jio and the three incumbent operators, and has resulted in severe quality of service issues for the Indian customers. “The call failure rate has been worsening rapidly in the last few days, while augmentation of interconnection capacity is still awaited,” the 4G telco said.
Reliance Jio has also claimed that these top telcos are still not allowing porting for their subscribers to Jio services, which “in any case is a mandatory requirement of their license and MNP Regulations. “
Most of the porting requests to the three operators are still getting rejected for unsubstantiated reasons,” it said.
