Reliance Jio strikes back, sees vested interests at play

RJIL blasts COAI for vilification campaign against Trai as well

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 in promoting the vested interests of incumbent operators.

In a letter to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), made public on Wednesday, RJio said COAI deliberately indulged in a vilification campaign, not only against RJIL but Trai as well.  

The company said it was targeting 100 million subscribers and till incumbents offer 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.

Jio has come out in support of Trai for its consultation paper on the removal of interconnect usage charges (IUC) and said incumbents’ intention was to sabotage the entry of a new player.

In the letter, Jio shared details of the scale 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 had kept both the Department of Telecommunications and Trai informed about its trial. LTE technology throughputs are dependent on signal-to-noise ratio, the firm said, and the extensive testing is to estimate optimal network parameters.

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.