TRAI chairman RS Sharma on Monday said that the regulatory authority would take action against incumbents and Reliance Jio for low-quality services. Pitted against the incumbents like Bharti Airtel, who have suffered a massive loss since the latest launch, even Jio has now been put under the radar and could face serious consequences.
Jio claims that their calls have exceeded 52 crores since the official launch on 5th September. TRAI has called for all call details from Jio and the incumbents between 15th and 19th September to determine the reasons for the poor quality service.
The Interventions: TRAI, DoT, COAI and PMO
Jio earlier claimed in its letter to the industry body COAI that the incumbent operators have not been providing them with an adequate amount of interconnect points (PoI), which has resulted in the poor quality of services. The bitter rivalry has seen several interventions from the Department of Telecom, TRAI, COAI and once even the PMO. However, the other parties including the main accused, Airtel has denied all such allegations with assurances of boosting the infrastructure.
Chairman Sharma also said that the PoI is a “bilateral issue” which needs to be resolved by the companies together, for which a meeting between the operators has been organized. He added that TRAI is concerned about the consumers and the quality of services offered to them, and if t means bringing the rivals together, then it shall be done.
Regulatory measures
The regulations suggest that a call failure rate of more than 0.5 percent is unacceptable. If the trouble is because of PoIs, then it must be resolved. He assured that TRAI would analyze the level of congestion at the PoIs once the data required is submitted by the incumbents and Jio, within the deadline.
The government has been keeping a close eye on the proceedings. The steps taken by TRAI so far have been satisfactory and are expected to resolve the matter soon.
The spat between the rivals erupted long before they officially became rivals. The incumbents have feared this disruption since the test rollout of Jio. Jio was also accused of commercially rolling out the services under the pretense of test rollouts. The subject of scrutiny was the distribution of services for free with handsets. The official launch is said to have reduced the prices by 80 percent.
