Question to be asked as TRAI penalises Airtel, Vodafone, Idea on Jio complaint
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Friday recommended that the country’s top three network operators be fined a combined Rs 3,050 crore after it found that they were denying new entrant Reliance Jio sufficient interconnection points.
Jio began offering 4G services in September, triggering a war over network points that connect Jio customers with Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular.
Incumbent operators Airtel, Vodafone and others approached TRAI against the free call service being offered by Jio, and called its tariff plan predatory, discriminatory and non-compliant to present rules.
In support of Reliance Jio, which is offering life-time free voice calling service, TRAI has held that tariff plans of the new player are compliant with existing rules and not discriminatory.
Responding to Jio’s complaints over the denial of points of interconnection (POI), TRAI recommended a fine of Rs 500 million (Rs 50 crore) per telecom zone for each of the three operators.
Airtel and Vodafone India were fined for 21 zones each, while Idea was fined for 19 zones in a country with a total of 22 telecoms zones or circles.
The denial of POI to Jio “appears to be with ulterior motive to stifle competition and is anti-consumer”, TRAI said in a statement.
Reliance Jio did not respond to an email seeking comment while Vodafone and Idea declined to comment.
“We are continuously augmenting the POIs provided to Reliance Jio and the pace of augmentation has been the fastest ever done by us,” a spokesperson for Airtel said. “We are in full compliance of the requirements of grade of service set by TRAI.”
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| Reliance Jio has asked rivals Airtel, Vodafone and Idea to release interconnection ports. |
Jio has again asked its rivals Airtel, Vodafone and Idea to release interconnection ports while attributing poor quality of service on its network to incumbent players’ undue delay in providing more connections.
Referring to TRAI’s directions issued to telecom operators on October 7 for resolving service quality issues, Jio in separate letters to the three incumbent operators has demanded in deference to TRAI’s directions immediate release of the shortfall.
The federal government’s department of telecom is expected to take up the issue of fines with the three telcos, and if a mutual arrangement is not arrived at the companies can seek legal recourse, a source said.
This clearly establishes the fact that all tariffs offered by Jio are in compliance with prevailing regulations. A key feature of its tariff packs is free voice calling for local, STD and national roaming. Besides this, it is offering unlimited free 4G mobile broadband till December 31.
Rival telecom operators had also contested the free data service offered by Jio beyond 90 days but the same have been set aside by the regulator.
The revised offer of free services by Jio has been limited to 90 days, i.e. December 3, 2016, and is therefore consistent with the guidelines on promotional offers, TRAI said in an order.
Jio said the free service, including unlimited mobile data, will be available for subscribers till December 31.
As per Jio’s filing with TRAI, the Jio Welcome Offer (JWO) will be available to all customers for subscription till December 3. “Reliance Jio wishes to reconfirm that JWO benefits of free unlimited voice and data will continue to be available to all subscribers till December 31, 2016,” the company said.
It said that consumers who cannot subscribe to Jio services till December 3 will continue getting opportunities to avail new offers and tariff plans.
“Reliance Jio aspires to provide the experience of Jio digital life to all Indians and to achieve this, it will continue coming up with more consumer friendly offers and plans to enhance the consumer experience and real time fulfilment of the Digital India initiative of the government,” the statement said.
At the end of the day, a major question that arises is, whether or not it is the responsibility of the regulator to provide a level playing field for incumbent operators in the fray.
Should it not provide certain niches for them to take on sudden technological challenges thrown by new entrants who have both money power and clout with state-of-the-art technology to boot?
Only the regulator can tell.