Jio says Airtel gesture won’t address call drops

Reliance Jio Digital Life
Reliance Jio on Sunday welcomed Bharti Airtel’s decision to provide better interconnection for its calls. It said the number of such points proposed remained substantially less than actual requirement — and won’t be able to address the issue of large-scale call drops.

A Jio statement said: “Based on the current traffic flow between the two telecom networks, the proposed augmentation by Bharti Airtel would still only suffice for less than one-fourth of the required interconnection capacity.”

Reliance Jio Infocomm stated that more than two crore calls are failing everyday between the two networks, which is far in excess of the quality of service parameters and of alarming proportions. Urgent steps are required to be taken in the interest of customers of both operators.

Jio said it is unfortunate that the Telecom Regulatory Authority’s intervention was required for Airtel to resume augmentation of points of interconnection, which it ought to have done by itself in compliance with its license terms.

The statement comes a day after Bharti Airtel said it has received the payments due on interconnection from Jio and that after executing the agreed augmentation in such points, their total number will be three times that at present. It said the capacity will be sufficient to serve over 15 million Jio customers, and added it will be much more than Jio’s subscriber base.

Airtel said the interconnect agreement provides for a commissioning period of 90 days from the day Reliance Jio makes the payment, while Airtel will work towards releasing the points of interconnect well ahead of the contractual obligation.

But this point was refuted by Jio.

Jio said the TRAI regulation does not provide for 90 days to adhere to quality of service parameters. The authority in fact instructed the incumbent operators to urgently provide requisite interconnection capacities to maintain quality of service parameters and not to make this subject to any contingencies or restrictions.

Jio found fault with the type of interconnection points Airtel was offering, and said it was a clear case of abuse of market dominance.

Jio said it appears that the quality of service will continue to suffer and Indian customers will be denied the benefits of superior and free voice services as a result of such anti-competitive behaviour.

Mukesh Ambani-promoted company said Airtel has been blocking mobile number portability for migration of potential subscribers to Jio, IANS reports.

No drops on Jio to Jio calls

Jio late in the night clarified that there are no incidents of call failures within the Jio network. “We encourage all customers to make Jio to Jio calls to experience HD quality voice services without any disruptions whatsoever. We also invite independent third parties such as TERM (DOT) to inspect and confirm that there are zero call failures on Jio network.”

Jio customers should encourage the receiving party to switch to the Jio network at the earliest so that they do not suffer due to such anti-competitive practices being followed by the incumbent operators.