Reliance says top telecom firms trying to sabotage Jio's debut, malign its name

NEW DELHI: Reliance Jio Infocomm on Wednesday hit back at the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), saying 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”.

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 ill-informed".



It has 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.

Also read: Reliance Jio bypassing regulations by offering full-fledged services, says 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.

Jio has explained that since it is Introducing a completely end to end IP-based network, a completely new technology, it needs to test the network at the fullest possible load, as a result of which it was seeking an augmented capacity from incumbent telcos.

Also read: KM Birla plans to create a $10 bn company to help Idea counter RJio

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 whose have tariff paying subscribers.