Airtel, Vodafone want higher fee to handle Jio's call 'tsunami'

NEW DELHI: India's top telecom firms have asked for a higher-than-prescribed fee to handle Reliance Jio's voice call 'tsunami'.

At a meeting called by the regulator Trai, incumbent operators assured Jio of providing “reasonable incremental“ number of interconnection points but voiced concern over what they viewed as an uncharacteristically high traffic flow from the new entrant's network due to its offer of free voice calling.

Called interconnect usage charge (ICU), it's current rate is 14 paise a minute.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has told the two parties to resolve the contentious interconnect matter among themselves, but warned that it would act if quality of service drops and consumers suffer.

Jio has alleged that crores of calls from its network are not getting connected on other networks, accusing rivals of violating telecom licence conditions by failing to provide adequate connections.

This, they said, had put a “financial burden“ on their operations, which they claimed can not be met by the present IUC rate.

“This needs to be raised, and by a high degree, to make up for Jio's abnormally large number of outgoing calls which is clogging our networks,“ officials of the operators said during the meeting, according to sources. The rates are governed by Trai and it has already issued a consultation paper on the subject.

Jio, which shook the industry by offering lifetime free outgoing calls, has said that its subscribers are not able to connect to the networks of other companies when making calls, or when called in. It has accused rivals of deliberately throttling its network by not providing sufficient number of interconnect points.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has told India’s top telcos and Reliance Jio Infocomm to resolve the contentious interconnect matter among themselves, but warned that it would act if quality of service drops and consumers suffer.

“If quality of service suffers, if consumers suffer, Trai will take action. That is Trai’s job,” a senior official told ET on Friday after the meeting. “The telcos should sit across the table and resolve it.”

Both the warring parties — Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular on one side and Jio on the other — appeared conciliatory after the meeting called to resolve a bitter battle over granting points of interconnections (PoIs) to Jio. Mukesh Ambani-owned Jio said it had sought an adequate amount of PoIs while earlier it had sought PoIs for 22 million users. Incumbents, who have been refusing to grant additional PoIs citing traffic imbalance, on Friday said they were willing to talk to Jio and provide a “reasonable number” of additional PoIs, if needed, an official at a top telco said.

But both sides didn’t specify on the number of PoIs that would be sought or given. PoIs are used to connect calls from one telecom operator to another. Jio says incumbent telcos haven’t provided enough PoIs resulting in its users facing huge call drop issues, while its rivals say enough have already been provided. “We have asked for the right number of connect, right quantum of interconnection.