All Talk–No Action: Hardly any new interconnection capacity made operational, claims RJio

Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJIL) today high-lighted another action of other incumbent operators – Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone, stating that there has been no augmentation in operational interconnect capacity for the company in last 15 days.

RJIL has been finding it difficult to cope-up with the other telecom operators, since its launch on September 5, 2016. 

The Mukesh-Ambani backed company has been writing letters to these three incumbent operators, for getting the 'Point of Interconnection and 'Mobile Number Portability' facility on track, as it was hurting their services. 

Ambani during the launch of RJio on September 5, accused these players stating that they were not fair in interconnection front during the time of their service trials. Later after recent discussion with the telecom regulatory, these telcos decided to provide additional POIs. 

However, Rjio says that the number of point of interconnection proposed by incumbent operators will not be enough.

As per the data provided by RJIL, the following are the operations of interconnection in last 15 days.  

“Despite of repeated reminders and bilateral meetings with incumbent operators and claims made by them, hardly any new interconnection capacity has been made operational by any of the three incumbent operators,” its said in a statement.

"Presently, RJIL’s immediate requirement for operational interconnection capacity is estimated to be based on transparent industry practice which requires order of around 4,000 – 5,000 E1s per operator for the three incumbent operators. Looking at the data above, it indicates that these incumbent operators have not demonstrated any real intent to resolve this issue," it said in a release. 

Almost 10 crore call failures has been recorded per day between RJIL and the three incumbent operators, which has displayed servere quality of RJio service issues for the Indian customers. 

RJIL stated that, the call failure rate has been worsening rapidly in the last few days, while augmentation of interconnection capacity is still awaited. 

"The deliberate move to not provide sufficient interconnection capacity, as is apparent from the above numbers, is clearly aimed at hindering RJIL’s entry into the sector and is depriving Indian customers from enjoying superior HD voice services being offered by RJIL," it added in the statement. 

Further RJIL said,"There have been press releases and media statements by some of the incumbent operators about positive intent to augment interconnection capacity in the last few days, however this has not been followed with action."

"Considering the way the working of E1s has been made, including the proposed augmentation by the incumbent operators, it would still be far lesser than what is required for RJio to meet QoS parameters, more concrete action is warranted from the incumbent operators," RJIL said. 

On the issue of Mobile Number Portability (“MNP”), RJIL said," while the incumbent operators have committed to allow porting for their subscribers who wish to subscribe to Jio services and which in any case is a mandatory requirement of their license and MNP Regulations, this has not translated into action on the ground. Most of the porting requests to the three operators are still getting rejected for unsubstantiated reasons."