Reliance Jio to Trai: Take action against telcos like Airtel, Vodafone for denying inter-connection

Reliance Jio Infocomm has urged Indian telecom regulator, Trai, to take action against incumbent telecom operators for not providing points of inter-connection (PoIs) to the Mukesh Ambani-led 4G telco during the ongoing test trials.

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The telco said that denying inter-connection was a blatant breach of the licence agreement, which provides for obligation of the licensee to provide inter-connection facilities to other licensees. “It may be pertinent to note that the obligation of a licensee to provide PoIs is absolute and not contingent on any other factors, including any traffic imbalance or the licensee not having announced commercial launch,” Jio said.

Jio, in a letter dated August 12 to Trai Chairman R S Sharma, said that dominant operators under the aegis of COAI has categorically mentioned that its member operators shall not be expected to provide PoIs to RJIL during the test trials.

Since December, Reliance Jio has has been doing test runs for its pan-India high-speed 4G network in preparation of a commercial launch.

Jio also argued that it is important that requisite PoIs must be unconditionally facilitated inter se between all operators, subject alone to payment of relevant IUC charges. It said that PoIs are required to maintain minimum quality of service to ensure calls are completed to all destinations.

The absence of PoIs from incumbent telcos has led to unusually high call failures during its beta run, the 4G entrant claimed

“The current number of PoIs provided or being provided to RJIL are far from adequate and this is more than evident from the fact that the current call failure rate is in excess of 65 per cent, resulting in more than 1.6 crore call failures per day between RJIL and the networks of Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea,” Jio said.

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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.

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. It also made clear that unless Jio doesn’t start commercial service; other GSM telcos are under no obligation to give additional E1s. The telcos also urged the telecom department and the Trai to bring clarity on a test mode conditions.