Airtel welcomes Reliance Jio's entry in Indian telecom space

In his AGM speech, Mukesh Ambani said that incumbent operators were deliberately dropping calls from Jio's network

Bharti Airtel has welcomed the entry of Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio in the Indian telecom market and has also ensured that it will fulfil all its regulatory obligations towards the latest entrant.

While announcing the services of Jio, Ambani has said that incumbent operators are deliberately dropping calls from its network and in the last week alone, Jio customers has suffered over 5 crore call failures to other networks because of insufficient interconnect capacity.

Ambani cited that operators have legal obligations, as part of licence conditions, to provide points of interconnects to other operators.

“We welcome Reliance Jio’s entry to the digital world and wish them the very best. We also welcome Jio’s call to leading operators to work together. As a responsible operator we will fulfil all our regulatory obligations as we have always done,” Airtel said in a statement.

Jio on Thursday announced that the full bouquet of its services will be available to all customers from September 5 and will be free till December 31, when the commercial launch is likely to take place. Jio has announced free voice calls for life and data rates at 1/10th of the prevailing tariffs.

Airtel said over the last 20 years, it has been contributing towards building a digitally enabled India and remains fully committed to and take leadership in supporting the government’s Digital India vision.