Reliance Jio wants Trai to take telcos to task over licence breach

NEW DELHI: Indian telecom wars saw a broadside being fired by Reliance Jio Infocomm, which urged the regulator to take legal action against the country’s top phone companies for violating licence terms by not providing enough interconnection points to allow calls originating from the Mukesh Ambani-owned operator’s network to go through.

“The continued denial and delay in the provisioning of points of interconnect ( PoIs) by dominant incumbent telecom service providers is unlawful, and actionable for appropriate legal action, as prescribed in the licence agreement/apper to RS Sharlicable regulations,” Jio said in an August 12 lettma, chairman, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India ( Trai). A copy of the letter, which went public on Tuesday, was sent to Telecom Secretary JS Deepak.

Jio cited licence terms that mandate telcos to provide sufficient Po-Is unrelated to issues such as traffic imbalance or whether a carrier is offering commercial services.

“RJIL has been complying with the relevant IUC (interconnect charges) payment terms with all operators per the relevant interconnection agreement and applicable Trai regulations with respect to all of the test users,” Jio said. IUC is paid to the company running the network where a call is received.

Jio’s note is the latest salvo in an exchange that started last week. The Cellular Operators Association of India ( COAI), which includes incumbents Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular, had complained to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) that Jio was allegedly running full-fledged commercial operations with 1.5 million users in the guise of a trial.

COAI said Jio’s offer of free voice calls to those users was leading to the clogging of networks and that the resultant “traffic imbalance” was hurting services to the incumbents’ paying customers. Also, the IUC that Jio was paying them was inadequate, COAI said.

The telcos said PoIs provided to Jio were sufficient for traffic from 20 million users and that they wouldn’t increase this until Jio launches commercial services. Jio hit back last Wednesday, writing to DoT and Trai that the top telcos were sabotaging its entry by not providing enough PoIs, thereby forcing it to delay a commercial launch. The spat has also seen the incumbent operators accuse Trai of being biased against them, a characterisation the regulator has rejected. The upcoming launch of 4G commercial services by Jio is expected to trigger a rate war that will hurt the financials of the top carriers.

CALL FAILURE

In its latest letter, Jio said its users are experiencing a 65% call failure rate. “Without expediting the requisite points of interconnect augmentation, this situation will only get worse,” it said. “Therefore, Reliance Jio’s demand for additional points of interconnect is critical for its continued test trial and launch of commercial operations.”

Jio pointed out that the regulator was required to ensure compliance of licence conditions, effective interconnection and quality of service besides setting interconnectivity terms.