HC sets aside CCI order to probe telecom 'cartel'

Jio had complained against incumbent operators Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea for forming a cartel and blocking its entry

In a setback to Reliance Jio, the Bombay High Court set aside a Competition Commission of India (CCI) order, wherein the fair trade regulator had ordered a director-general (D-G) level probe to ascertain if the incumbent operators were involved in cartelisation to thwart the entry of the Mukesh Ambani-led Jio.

Jio had in November last year approached CCI alleging the incumbents were abusing their dominant market power by forming a cartel and denying it the requisite number of points of interconnect (PoIs).  Jio had complained against incumbent operators Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular for forming a cartel and blocking its entry.

On the complaint, the CCI in an order said prima facie there appears cartelisation by incumbent operators and directed the D-G to probe the matter.

The incumbents approached Bombay High Court against the CCI order. The incumbent operators and Reliance Jio had been involved in a slugfest over PoIs. Jio had blamed lack of PoIs for call failures. 

Ever since Jio launched its services last year, it had been involved in a slugfest with incumbent operators over the issue of PoIs.

Jio had also complained to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) regarding the issue. The regulator had also recommended a penalty of Rs 3,050 crore against three telcos — Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular — for failing to meet licence conditions relating to interconnect points with Reliance Jio.

Cellular Operators Association of India had alleged that the volume of voice traffic generated by Jio due to the free services it was offering was choking the PoIs. 

The incumbent telecom operators submitted their compliance reports regarding PoI congestion to Trai on October 18 last year saying they had provided sufficient PoIs to Reliance Jio.

On October 7 last year, Trai had directed all operators to submit a compliance report on QoS norms as congestion at PoIs was resulting in large-scale failure of inter-operator calls. Jio had claimed that the incumbents were not offering enough PoIs.