The country’s largest telecommunications services provider, Bharti Airtel (Airtel), on Tuesday said that following bilateral discussions with Reliance Jio, it will provide additional points of interconnect (PoIs) to the latter.

Airtel had extended an invitation to Jio to discuss its requirement of additional PoIs, the company said in a statement. Idea also had on Monday announced that it will expand its capacity with Jio to over 6.5 million subscribers, with the release of 196 additional POIs shortly.

“Airtel is a responsible organisation committed to complying with regulations and the Interconnect Agreements in letter and spirit and will continue to be so,” it said.

Airtel has been providing PoIs to Jio, well ahead of the commencement of its commercial operations. With the latest augmentation, the total number of PoIs will become three times the present number, the company said in a statement.

“Based on the current traffic pattern with all other operators, this capacity is sufficient to serve over 15 million customers, which is significantly higher than Jio’s existing customer base,” it said.

Quality of service

Having agreed to release the PoIs, Airtel said it would also need to take cognisance of the massive asymmetry in the volume of traffic between the two networks and ensure that the quality of service for Airtel customers is not impacted.

Airtel expressed hope that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India will look into the issue of asymmetric traffic on an urgent basis and ensure that massive volumes of free calls terminating on Airtel’s network do not adversely impact its network.

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