Mutually discuss PoI issue and sort it out: Trai tells telcos

After recommending Rs 3,050-cr penalty on Airtel, Vodafone & Idea Cellular, the regulator Telecom asked incumbent telecom operators to resolve the issue of the PoIs with newcomer RJio

After recommending Rs 3,050-crore penalty on Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Tuesday asked incumbent telecom operators to resolve the issue of the points of interconnection (PoIs) with newcomer Reliance Jio.

Trai Chairman R S Sharma held a nearly two-hour long meeting with the telecom carriers over the issue of providing points of interconnect that help complete calls originating from a network.

Interconnection enables mobile users to make calls to customers of other networks and is, therefore, crucial for smooth functioning of mobile services.

Sharma asked the telecom operators to mutually resolve the issue of interconnection at the earliest and warned them of action if service quality parameters are breached, sources told Press Trust of India.

As per quality of service rules, not more than five calls in 1,000 should fail due to network congestion.

The meeting was attended by Bharti Airtel MD and CEO Gopal Vittal, Vodafone India MD and CEO Sunil Sood, Idea MD and CEO Himanshu Kapania and Reliance Jio Director Mahendra Nahata.

According to the sources, the incumbents tried to raise the issue of Rs 3,050-crore penalty as recommended by Trai on Airtel, Vodafone and Idea, but Sharma asked them to look at the present and future plans of action.

They added that Jio has claimed that call failure on its network is still up to 80%.

The penalty recommendation was made following complaint by Reliance Jio that over 75% of calls on its network are failing as the incumbents were not providing sufficient PoIs that would help complete calls.

Trai, in its recommendation to the Department of Telecom, said it has found the trio to be non-compliant with licence conditions and service quality norms, given the high rate of call failures and congestion at interconnect points for RJio.

The penalty for Airtel and Vodafone worked out to about Rs 1,050 crore each while in the case of Idea Cellular, it is about Rs 950 crore.