Jio says other telcos levying hidden charges on customers

Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio on Tuesday defended its move to charge customers 6 paise per minute for interconnect usage charges (IUC) and alleged that other telecom operators are levying the same in a hidden manner.

Accusing the incumbent operators of lacking transparency, the telco said these players have invested in wrong technologies that have cost them dearly and they cannot offset inefficiency in their networks in the name of interconnection usage charges.

Reliance Jio President for network, global strategy and service development Mathew Oommen told PTI that telecom operators need to build an all IP network for transitioning to 5G and not invest in old technologies like 2G.

A telecom operator has to pay IUC charges to the operator on whose network a call is made. It is associated with the cost of carrying calls in old technology networks. At present this charge is 6 paise per minute for calls made to other network.

"Operators made windfall for many years. ...rather 2G/ IUC cannot be seen as a mechanism to offset for the inefficiencies they have," Oommen said.

On Reliance Jio's IUC decision, he said, "We could have given unlimited plans like the rest of the industry. Nobody would have ever known but we chose not to do so because we want to be transparent for every paisa that we charge. It was a choice we made. Instead we identify it as IUC charge. Just like it is charged to users in the lower spectrum of Rs 20-100 bracket. There minimum charge for voice calls could be anywhere about Re 1 to Rs 1.5. The top tiers have unlimited and bottom layers are penalised."