Tech Telecom

Telecom operators Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea have cited free voice calls offered by Jio as a reason for call failures due to heavy network congestion. The reply is given after show cause notice by TRAI to telecom operators.

“TRAI has received replies from Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular. In their response, the operators have highlighted that the free voice calls by Reliance Jio are prompting people to use more minutes, thus leading to an increased traffic at the interconnection points,” sources added.

Incumbent operators have also taken the stand that termination charge of 14 paise per minute prescribed under the present IUC regime is low and due to this they are incurring increasing higher costs, due to the high level of traffic asymmetry. Operators also asked TRAI to examine the violation of telecom tariff order by Jio.

In the last few months, Reliance Jio clashed with major telecom operators over network connectivity and interconnection issues. Jio mainly accused operators like Airtel, Vodafone and Idea over call failures due to far less than adequate points of interconnections (PoIs) that are needed for Jio users to complete a call with other telecom operators. While the other operators have charged the newcomer of unleashing a “tsunami” of free traffic on their networks.

Jio announced unlimited free voice calls and SMS for the lifetime and low tariff 4G data, post 31st Dec. 4G data will be charged and unlimited voice calls and SMS would remain free forever.

The company had alleged that over 12 crore calls failed daily between Jio and the networks of Airtel, Vodafone and Idea. As per quality of service rules, not more than five calls in 1,000 should fail due to network congestion.