Jio slams Airtel, says 10 cr calls failing a day

The call failure rate, Jio said, has been worsening rapidly in the last few days, while augmentation of interconnection capacity is still awaited

With 10 crore calls from its network to users of operators like Airtel failing per day, Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio, on Tuesday, hit out at incumbent operators for not making operational new interconnections in the last 15 days despite repeated reminders.

Against a requirement of 4,000 to 5,000 points of interconnect per operator, the interconnections released are less than 2,000 by Airtel, about 1,500 by Vodafone and close to 1,600 by Idea, Reliance Jio said in a statement said.

"Despite repeated reminders and bilateral meetings with incumbent operators and claims made by them, hardly any new interconnection capacity has been made operational by any of the three incumbent operators, viz. Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India or Idea Cellular for Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (RJIL) in the last 15 days," it said.

It said its immediate requirement of operational interconnection capacity based on transparent industry practice is of the order of 4,000 - 5,000 E1s per operator for the three incumbent operators.

"It is therefore apparent that at the current rate, the incumbent operators have not demonstrated any real intent to resolve this issue," the company said. "With over 10 crore call failures per day between RJIL and the three incumbent operators, this has resulted in severe quality of service issues for the Indian customers."

The call failure rate, it said, has been worsening rapidly in the last few days, while augmentation of interconnection capacity is still awaited.

"The continued denial of requisite PoI's is in clear violation of the license conditions and TRAI regulations on quality of service by the incumbent operators.

"The deliberate move to not provide sufficient interconnection capacity ... is clearly aimed at hindering RJIL's entry into the sector and is depriving Indian customers from enjoying superior HD voice services being offered by RJIL," the statement said.

Stating that there have been press releases and media statements by some of the incumbent operators about positive intent to augment interconnection capacity in the last few days, it said this has not been followed with action.

"Considering the current working E1s, including the proposed augmentation by the incumbent operators, would still be far lesser than what is required to meet QoS parameters, more concrete action is warranted from the incumbent operators," the company said.

RJIL hoped that the incumbent operators would enhance the PoI's sufficiently to meet their license obligation of quality of service (QoS) with immediate effect and maintain these parameters on an ongoing basis.

Photograph: Ajay Verma/Reuters