Amid escalation of war of words between Bharti Airtel and newcomer Reliance Jio over call connectivity, telecom regulator TRAI today emphasised that points of interconnect is a "consumer" issue which it will continue to monitor.
"We have been deliberating on this issue...It is not an issue of (operator) A versus B. It is an issue of consumers," TRAI Chairman RS Sharma said on the sidelines of IAMAI Digital Summit here. Also read: Over 700 Government Websites Hacked in 4 Years: MHA
Noting that TRAI had intervened into the issue, Sharma said the regulator will continue to look at the situation. Yesterday, Mukesh Ambani-promoted Reliance Jio termed as "malicious and misleading", rival Airtel's claim that it has provided sufficient interconnect capacity to Jio and that latter has been unable to activate all the points of interconnect (PoIs) and utilise the said capacity.
"This latest statement is a continuation of Airtel's ongoing mischievous and motivated campaign to divert attention from its anti-competitive and anti-consumer actions and violations of license conditions which are being investigated by the authorities," Jio said.
Over 53 per cent of the national long distance (NLD) calls are failing due to "inadequate" PoIs from Airtel, Jio has alleged. "Inspite of intervention by authorities and censure proceedings against Airtel, NLD call failure rate was at 53.4 per cent as against TRAI norm of 0.5 per cent. Also read: Fire at Samsung Factory Due to Faulty Batteries
There has always been a lag in PoIs required and PoIs provided by Airtel resulting in severe service issues for Indian customers," Jio had said. Its comments came as a response to a statement by Airtel that it has provided adequate capacity to Jio to serve over 190 million customers.
Bharti Airtel said, "The PoIs have been provided well above the customer growth projection provided by Jio to Airtel. The capacity provided is ideal for serving over 190 million customers on the Jio network and is more than double of the 72.5 million total customers currently claimed by Jio." (Disclosure: News18.com is part of Network18 Media & Investment Limited which is owned by Reliance Industries Limited that also owns Reliance Jio.)
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