 "Airtel, Jio call truce after incumbent provides more POIs")
The country’s top mobile operator Bharti Airtel has provided over 7,000 additional points of interconnect (PoIs) to Reliance Jio, a move welcomed by the Mukesh Ambani-owned firm as it would solve the congestion issue and call failures.
The development follows meetings with Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha and Telecome Regulatory Authority of India Chairman R S Sharma with CEOs of Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and Reliance Jio earlier this week on the subject of breach of quality of service (QoS) parameters.
After recommending penalty to the tune of Rs 3,050 crore on Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, Sharma had asked the operators to solve the PoI issue with Jio mutually. Sinha too had said the bilateral issue should be resolved within the regulatory framework.
Airtel said with the additional over 7,000 PoIs, it has provided 17,000 PoIs to Jio till date, which is sufficient to serve over 75 million customers and this is well ahead of the timeframe, since there are currently only 25 million customers making calls to the Airtel network from Jio.
“This allocation was long overdue, considering the severe hardships caused to the customers of both operators in being able to connect voice calls between the two networks. More than 280 crore calls have failed between Jio and Airtel over the last three-and-a-half months because of absolute shortage of PoI capacity,” Jio said in a statement.
Airtel said it has been providing PoIs to Jio, even before the commencement of commercial operations. Following the commercial launch of services by Jio on September 5, Airtel has released PoIs at a staggering pace, well ahead of its bilateral and regulatory obligations.
Also Read
However, Jio said all operators have a mandatory and unconditional obligation under the licence to provide adequate PoIs to all the other operators and this is irrespective of the status of operations of the other operators or the traffic pattern.
In June 2016, Jio, had provided its forecast of points of interconnect to Airtel. At a meeting on November 1, 2016 in the presence of the Trai, Jio reiterated its requirement and requested Airtel to provide sufficient PoIs in line with its forecast of June 2016.
“Our regulatory obligations permit us to provide interconnect in a period of 90 days. With this augmentation Airtel has provided Jio capacity that is comparable to operators with six to eight times the customer base of Jio, in mere nine weeks of their launch,” Airtel said.
Countering the 90 day period by Airtel, Jio said there is no entitlement of timing when it comes to such severe breach of QoS.
Airtel further added that it requests Jio to ensure that the additional PoIs be operationalised with the same alacrity.
Jio said it would like to reiterate that there has been no delay in operationalising PoIs at its end and also expressed hope that Airtel will continue to release adequate PoIs going forward to ensure that it adheres to the QoS parameter of PoI congestion mandated by Trai regulation at less than 5 per 1,000 calls at all times.
Regarding asymmetry of calls terminating on the Airtel network from Jio due to free services, Jio said the current traffic pattern is completely in line with what is expected in a new network.
The Playout
The Playout
- In June, Jio had provided its forecast of PoIs to Airtel
- On Tuesday, in the presence of the Trai, Jio reiterated its requirement
- Airtel has so far provided 17,000 PoIs to Jio
- This might be sufficient for 75 million customers
- Airtel says, only 25 million customers make calls to Airtel network from Jio