COAI promoting vested interests, says RJio

Comes out in support of Trai's consultation paper on IUC charges

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A day after the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) accused it of masquerading full-blown services in the guise of a trial, Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJIL) has struck back, saying the allegations were an exercise to promote the vested interests of incumbent operators.

In a letter it has written to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), RJio said COAI has deliberately indulged in an unwarranted vilification campaign, not only against RJIL but also against Trai. The letter was made public by Jio on Wednesday. 

The company said it is was targeting 100 million subscribers and till the incumbents offere the requisite interconnection bandwidth, it cannot launch commercial services. RJio has alleged that incumbents are using their dominant position to stifle others, arguing that lower interconnect rates benefit consumers, while higher rates only benefit incumbents. 

Jio has come out in support of Trai for its consultation paper on the removal of interconnect usage charges, or IUC, and said the real intention is to sabotage the entry of a new player.

In the letter, Jio shared details of the scale and reach of its project, which would for the first time in India offer LTE (long-term evolution) voice and data, video and messaging  to cover a vast geography without any fallback on legacy circuit switched technology. Jio has also explained that it has kept both the Department of Telecommunications and Trai informed about its trial. LTE technology throughputs are highly dependent on signal-to-noise ratio, the company said, and the extensive testing is to estimate optimal network parameters. The exercise is being done for the subscribers’ benefit, the letter added.  

RJio said it has also kept Trai informed about the on-boarding of subscribers on a monthly basis and this has been done following due process. The trial is within the scope of the terms of the Unified License, it added. Since the company is responsible for quality of service, it needs to sufficiently load the network and internally test it. 

Jio also claimed that it was not provided the required Points of Interconnect (PoIs) despite informing Trai about this. The company claimed the PoIs provided by operators were not sufficient, which is in violation of clause 6.2 of the Unified License, which mandates that all operators provide interconnection.