Trai meets telcos on predatory pricing claims

Assures them it will look into their arguments

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Friday met incumbent operators after they had complained about Reliance Jio offering predatory pricing by giving free voice calls to its customers. Trai assured them it would look into their arguments.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) Chairman R S Sharma undertook the meeting and listened to the claims of incumbent operators, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular.

The regulator assured the telecos it would look into the matter and revert as soon as possible.

"The Trai Chairman listened to us... he is examining the matter and will get back to us at the earliest," Vodafone India Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Sunil Sood said after the meeting. Apart from Sood, Airtel CEO and Managing Director (India & South Asia) Gopal Vittal and Idea Cellular MD Himanshu Kapania were present in the meeting.

A senior regulatory official of Telenor was also present.

The operators had written to Trai that Jio's voice tariffs are in violation of Trai's 30th amendment to TTO order. The amendment was made in 2004 which states that tariffs should be non-predatory, non-discrimatory and IUC compliant.

A senior official from Trai said they have written to Jio to explain if its tariffs are compliant of tariff order.

The incumbents said if the interconnect usage charge (IUC) was 14 paisa per call, the tariff should be more than that. The operators had asked Trai to examine this as it was predatory pricing. Jio had already announced that all the voice calls on its network would always be free.

The incumbents and Reliance Jio have already been engaged in a slugfest over points of interconnects (PoIs) with Jio claiming it has not been provided with enough ports leading to crores of calls failure. The charge, however, was denied by the existing operators.