Bharti Airtel on Thursday said it has provided over 7,000 additional Points of Interconnect (PoIs) to Reliance Jio, taking the total number of PoIs to over 17,000.
This capacity is sufficient to serve over 75 million customers, based on the forecast provided by Jio to Airtel. This will also ensure that the quality of service (QoS) is maintained and customers are not inconvenienced, the company said.
“Airtel has been providing PoIs to Jio, even before the commencement of Jio’s commercial operations,” it said.
Following the commercial launch of services by Jio on September 5, Airtel has released PoIs at a staggering pace, well ahead of its bilateral and regulatory obligations. In fact, the number of PoIs provided by Airtel to Jio is more than 2.5 times the number provided to an existing operator with a comparable subscriber base, Airtel said.
In June, Jio, had provided its forecast of projected points of interconnect to Airtel. At a meeting on November 1, in the presence of the TRAI, Jio reiterated its requirement and requested Airtel to provide sufficient PoIs in line with its forecast of June 2016.
It said Jio should now ensure that the additional PoIs be operationalised “with the same alacrity”. “This will help identify any network-related issues that Jio may have, should any problems persist, given the massive over capacities provided by us,” it said.
In addition, Jio has already provided us their future requirements for capacities at 100 million customers. As and when they ramp up their current subscriber base, we will further augment capacities ahead of time, as we have always done.