Jio vs incumbents: Telcos submit report to Trai

Telecom operators have submitted their compliance report regarding quality of services (QoS) norms to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). The incumbents have claimed that they have provided sufficient points of interconnects (PoIs) to latest entrant Reliance Jio.

On October 7, Trai had directed all operators to submit a compliance report on QoS norms as congestion at PoIs was resulting in large-scale failure of inter-operator calls. Jio had claimed that the incumbents were not offering enough PoIs. According to sources, the incumbents have said they have provided enough PoIs to Jio but the latter has not activated all of them, leading to call failures. “Jio has been provided with PoIs which could support 50 million customers,” said a senior executive of one of the incumbents. Another telco said there was zero congestion at PoIs and the utilisation rate was 70-80 per cent at Jio’s end.

Jio, which launched its services last month, is offering free voice calls and 4G mobile broadband services till December 31.

On October 12, Jio wrote fresh letters to the incumbents, seeking more PoIs. In June, Jio had sought PoIs for estimated 22 million subscribers. Subsequently for September 2016, December 2016 and March 2017 POIs have been sought for estimated 50 mn, 75 mn and 100 mn subscribers, respectively. “It may be noted that the demand for E1s based on 50 mn subscribers, scheduled for September 2016, is already past overdue,” Jio said. The company further said unless its demand for interconnect points was met, the current PoI congestion levels will unabatedly continue to be much higher than the permissible limits. According to QoS rules, not more than five out of every 1,000 calls should fail.