Reliance Jio accuses competitors of bias

Reliance Jio Infocomm on Wednesday hit back at the cellular operators association of India (COAI), saying that the GSM industry body representing India's top telcos was trying to "sabotage the entry of" the Mukesh Ambani-­owned mobile phone operator and "malign its name" said a report in The Economic Times.

In identical but separate letters to telecom secretary JS Deepak and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) chairman RS Sharma dated August 10, Jio has called the GSM Industry body's recent allegations against it, "malicious, unfounded and ill­informed."

Jio also complained that the GSM Industry body is dominated by a few operators. COAI represents top telcos including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular. Jio is also a member of COAI.

Jio has further shot down claims that it was violating any license conditions in seeking an increase in the points of interconnect from incumbent telcos. It has also defended Trai, and termed the COAI's recent accusation of the regulator of bias as unfounded.

The letter comes soon after GSM Industry body wrote to the telecom department (DoT) complaining that Jio was allegedly violating license conditions and trying to game policy. COAI had alleged that Jio was masquerading full­-fledged telecom services under the garb of testing.

COAI had alleged that the volume of voice traffic generated on Jio due to the free services it was offering was choking points of interconnect and in turn impairing service quality of other operators who have tariff paying subscribers.