Will respond to Trai, DoT on interconnect fine: Sunil Mittal

He adds, the company will do what needs to be done

Bharti Enterprises Chairman Sunil Mittal on Wednesday said Airtel would respond to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and the department of telecommunications on the proposed penalty over points of interconnect offered to Reliance Jio.

The telecom regulator last week suggested a penalty of Rs 1,050 crore each on Airtel and Vodafone and Rs 950 crore on Idea Cellular for violating norms relating to points of interconnect.

“We will respond to Trai and DoT when the time comes. The company will do what needs to be done,” Mittal said.

The boss of the country’s biggest telecom operator said points of interconnect had been liberally provided to Reliance Jio and it was not an issue. He said Trai must have some confusion regarding the matter.

Gopal Vittal, managing director and chief executive officer of Bharti Airtel, said his company had offered Reliance Jio points of interconnect that were 2.5-3 times more than other operators.

“There seems to be some confusion on the points of interconnect offered to Reliance Jio. We have offered points of interconnect 2.5-3 times of other operators and the pace at which the points of interconnect were provided is unprecedented. We are hopeful that DoT will take an objective view on interconnection,” Vittal said during an investors’ call.

Trai has written to Telecom Secretary J S Deepak that Airtel, Vodafone and Idea were not compliant with the terms of their licences and “denial of interconnection to Reliance Jio appears to be with the ulterior motive to stifle competition”.

Airtel, Idea and Vodafone have maintained that they are bound to provide points of interconnect after the commercial launch of Reliance Jio’s services, which took place on September 5. 

Since the launch, they claim, the pace of providing points of interconnect has been extraordinary, even though the rules allow them 90 days to provide the interconnect points.

Mittal also added nobody could offer free services for life. While announcing its quarterly results yesterday, Airtel had said its mobile business had experienced a slowdown due to free services being offered by a new operator, Reliance Jio.

“Obviously, data growth will taper off for a period of time. Let us wait till December, that is the time we need to assess. After that a couple of quarters to see how it settles down,” Mittal said.

Mittal said the industry would like to see spectrum prices being moderated. In recently concluded spectrum auctions, telecom operators ignored premium air waves in the 700 MHz band, which were put up for sale for the first time, at a reserve or base price of Rs 11,485 crore per MHz.