We’re democratic and take all views on board, says COAI after Mukesh Ambani's criticism

NEW DELHI: The industry body that represents India’s top telcos has rejected Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani’s charge that it functions in an undemocratic manner and reflects the views of only one or two operators.

In a statement issued on Thursday evening, the Cellular Operators Association of India ( COAI) said Ambani’s comments in an interview to ET were “absolutely incorrect and misleading”.

“COAI is a fully democratic association and takes into account the views of all its member operators,” the GSM body said.

Ambani had told this newspaper that COAI’s structure was flawed. Ambani said COAI’s structure was flawed as the voting rights of the members depended on the revenue of the operators. While Reliance Jio Infocomm, too, was a member of COAI, the company’s chairman said, “We have zero revenue, so we are crowded out.”

COAI, on its part, said the industry body’s views were fully endorsed by all or majority of its member operators. “Calling into question the credibility and integrity of the views and opinions of all its member operators is against the spirit of the conduct of members of the Association. We would expect the member partners to take utmost care while talking about the functioning of the Association,” the industry body said.



COAI also termed as “absolutely incorrect” Ambani’s comment that given the voting rules, the top official or the CEO of the association effectively becomes “an employee of the top two or three operators”.

Rajan S Mathews is the director-general of COAI. Gopal Vittal, Bharti Airtel CEO for India & South Asia, is its chairman while Vodafone India CEO Sunil Sood is the vice-chairman.

Its members include the country’s top three carriers — Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular — smaller operators such as Aircel, Telenor and Videocon Telecom, as well as Jio.

BITTER BATTLE
COAI, on behalf of its leading members, has been waging a bitter battle with Jio on several issues. Jio has cried foul over the denial on part of incumbent operators to provide it sufficient points of interconnection (PoIs) to complete calls originating on its network, the primary reason for calls made from its network failing to go through.

The incumbents, through COAI, have refused to give extra PoIs to Jio, claiming the traffic imbalance emanating from Jio’s network due to the free calls was choking their networks.

COAI has also been involved in a brawl with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India ( Trai) on the issue of reviewing interconnect user, or call termination, charges. The regulator has proposed lowering or even abolishing the fee, a move that the industry body claims is biased against incumbent carriers and in favour of new entrants.

“Especially with regard to the Interconnect User Charge (IUC), we would like to categorically state that the views expressed by the Association on the matter are of ‘all the members’ except Reliance Jio, which is the only member opposing it,” the association said in its statement.

Trai Chairman RS Sharma had rejected the accusations while Jio has previously defended the regulator.