Though the Competition Commission of India has ordered an investigation against the incumbent telecom operators, two members have dissented the majority ruling. The two dissenting members have stated that they found no case against the incumbent operators and the case should be closed.
“With due reverence to the majority, we are unable to persuade ourselves to agree with the majority order holding a prima facie case of violation of Section 3 of the Act,” the dissent order states.
The majority ruling of the CCI has ordered a probe of telecom majors — Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular — for allegedly trying to block the entry of Reliance Jio. The regulator has decided to investigate allegations of unfair business practices made against the incumbent telecom players, and said it will also examine the overall conduct of the Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI), especially since the allegations of anti-competitive practices have been made against three of its key members.
RJio had earlier approached the CCI alleging that the incumbents were abusing their dominant market power by refusing to give adequate points of interconnect. While the majority ruling by the CCI said that this should be investigated, the dissenting members took a view that the position taken by RJio was “unreasonable” since the operator was only at the trial phase when it requested for points of interconnection.
“It is evident that RJio itself was more to be blamed for the congestion on its network than the incumbent telecom operators. There are several reasons for this view of ours: the major reason being the disruptive behaviour of RJio and the wrong estimation of points of interconnection provided to the incumbent operators by RJio itself.
The majority order, however, has asked for the investigation against incumbent telcos to be completed within 60 days.