Now Jio collides with Idea in PoI battle

NEW DELHI: Idea Cellular on Friday said it will provide over 230 per cent additional capacity to Reliance Jio to enhance capacity in both access and long-distance interconnection, allowing seamless calling between networks.

Late in the day, Jio countered Idea's offer, saying it was inadequate and noted four crore calls were dropping a day between the two networks, or over 750 calls failing per 1,000 as against the quality of service (QoS) requirement regulation of less than five calls failing per 1,000 calls made.

The Aditya Birla Group Company, in a statement, said that it has now provisioned 1,865 ports for access, from 565 earlier. The telco is also expanding NLD capacity by nearly 50 per cent. "Idea is committed to ensure superior quality of service and will continue to engage and expand capacity for the new operator."

Jio, in a counter statement, said that the response by Idea to the severe QoS issues is "disappointing and displays lack of intent on Idea's part to resolve this critical issue." Idea said it invited Jio for a discussion to mutually resolve the traffic asymmetry and the new capacity is the outcome of that discussion. With this capacity expansion, over 2,100 ports will now be available for traffic between Idea and Reliance Jio.

Reliance Jio claimed Idea has operationalised just 50 new E1s in the last 10 days as a result of which call failure rate has been increasing drastically.

As against certain media statements, the proposed augmentation by Idea increases capacity by only 34 per cent, which is grossly inadequate, Jio said, adding that the proposed augmented capacity is still less than 40 per cent of the initial firm demand placed by Jio based on transparent workings shared with Idea several months ago.

The 4G entrant said the manner of release of new capacity by incumbents is "very disillusioning insofar as it is being reflected as a favour to Jio."