Reliance Jio says incumbent telcos to be blamed for debt woes

Blames Airtel, Vodafone and Idea for cartelisation and financial stress of smaller players

Even as the incumbent telcos talk about decreasing profitability in business, the latest entrant on the block Reliance Jio feels that telecom continues to remain one of the highest profitable sectors with an Ebitda margin of 30 per cent and the 'so-called' financial stress has been caused by the old operators themselves as they did not invest in equity as well as in new technology but kept on taking more debt.

Jio, which presented its views while meeting the inter-ministerial group (IMG) today, is believed to have said though incumbent operators have made significant returns over the years, they have not