 "A general view of Reliance Jio headquarters is seen on the outskirts of Mumbai")
Days after telecom regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) brokered truce between warring telcos, Bharti Airtel released additional interconnect bandwidth to Reliance Jio, taking the tally up to 2,000 points of interconnect (PoIs). Both Idea and Airtel red-flagged the issue of traffic asymmetry, while announcing release of fresh PoIs to Jio.
Within hours of Airtel’s statement, Jio backed it with its own statement, which said consumers of Jio faced over 220 million call failures on Airtel’s network, while 520 million calls failed cumulatively on the networks of the three incumbent operators. Jio has been writing letters to the regulator, as incumbent operators were not releasing interconnect bandwidth - they objected to its enlarged trial programme. Even after Jio announced the commercial launch of its service, incumbents did not release PoIs. At the meeting called by Trai, incumbent operators agreed to release more interconnects to Jio.
On Monday, Idea released 196 additional PoIs to Jio, while Bharti Airtel’s total tally of PoIs to Jio went up to 2,000. With the latest augmentation, the total number of PoIs will become three times the present number. In a statement, Airtel said: “Based on the current traffic pattern with all other operators, this capacity is sufficient to serve over 15 million customers, which is significantly higher than Jio’s existing customer base.”
India’s largest telecommunications services provider on Tuesday said following its bilateral discussions with Jio, it will provide additional PoIs to it. Airtel had extended an invitation to Jio to discuss its requirement of additional PoI.
While releasing additional interconnect-bandwidth to Jio, both Idea and Airtel maintained the asymmetry in traffic volumes would be an issue and hoped the regulator would look into it. Telecom operators had expressed concern before the regulator on September 9 that since Jio was offering free voice, the traffic emanating from its network was far higher than that originating from their networks and terminating on Jio’s network.
Idea, on Monday, said Trai had been informed in August there existed an unprecedented asymmetry of traffic of 14.5 times between Idea and Jio. The company’s statement said: “Never ever has such a high asymmetry been observed with a new operator in the past. The company is also incurring higher costs due to this high level of traffic asymmetry.” Telcos have also argued that the asymmetry would impact the experience of their subscribers.
Jio, in response, said the outgoing traffic from its network was less than two calls per customer per hour, even during peak traffic period, which requires only a reasonable number of PoIs. The company’s statement said: “These calls are not to one operator but distributed over all the operators. Incumbent operators are describing such a modest call rate as a tsunami of traffic from Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJIL).”
Jio further called the apprehension expressed by incumbents regarding asymmetric voice traffic as “unsubstantiated.” RJIL wishes to clarify that the voice traffic on its network is in line with industry trends and as expected for any new operator. Over time, as the customer base grows, this asymmetry reduces and the traffic becomes symmetric.
Clearly, the last word has not been said on this matter.
