After Jio threatens to sue, Airtel falls in line
Synopsis
Bharti Airtel like Idea has agreed to provide additional interconnect points to Reliance Jio This comes after RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani alleged that the Jio network had suffered 5 crore call failures
After Idea, Bharti Airtel has also agreed to provide additional interconnect points (POIs) to Reliance Jio, saying these ports will be sufficient to support 15 million customers of the new operator.
"Airtel has been providing PoIs to Jio, well ahead of the commencement of its commercial operations. With the latest augmentation, the total number of PoIs will become 3 times the present number of PoIs," Airtel said in a statement.
Reliance Jio, which commercially launched its services on September 5 has accused incumbent players of not releasing sufficient inter-connection ports and had sought legal action against them.
RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani on September 1, alleged that the Jio network had suffered 5 crore call failures in the preceding week due to inter-connectivity issues.
The move comes a day after Idea Cellular offered to provide more PoIs to Jio after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) intervened to resolve the matter.
Idea had yesterday said it has decided to proactively expand capacity with Jio to over 6.5 million subscribers, with the release of 196 additional POIs, shortly.
According to sources, the regulator has said that it will take action against telecom operators found responsible for poor quality of service. Airtel said it is a responsible organisation committed to complying with the regulations and the interconnect agreements in letter and spirit and will continue to be so.
"Based on the current traffic pattern (on Airtels network) with all other operators, this capacity is sufficient to serve over 15 million customers, which is significantly higher than Jios existing customer base," the statement said.
Like Idea, Bharti Airtel also highlighted the issue of "massive asymmetry" in the volume of traffic between the two networks.
The company added that it would need to take cognizance of the situation and ensure that the quality of service for its own customers is not impacted.
Inter-connection is required to enable mobile users to make calls to customers of other telecom networks. A mobile operator levies inter-connection usage charge for each incoming call it gets from subscriber of another network.
Incumbent telecom operators have been demanding higher interconnection charges compared to 14 paise they get for each incoming mobile call on their network.
Airtel, which is the country's largest operator with 255.73 million subscribers, has also extended an invitation to Jio for discussing its requirement of additional PoIs.
Airtel expressed hope that TRAI will look into the issue of asymmetric traffic on an urgent basis and ensure that massive volumes of free calls terminating on Airtels network do not adversely impact its network