The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s final view on the ongoing spat between Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJio) and existing players, including Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone India, on points of interconnection will be out shortly.
“We have examined the views expressed by the existing players and have also taken Reliance Jio’s response on these opinions. TRAI’s views on the issue based on these responses will be out this week itself,” TRAI Chairman RS Sharma told BusinessLine in an interview.
While RJio had complained against other telecom service providers saying its calls are not getting through because of the operators not providing points of interconnection (PoI), the incumbent operators blamed the ‘free’ calls provided by RJio for the congestion and said they are incurring increasing costs due to the high traffic asymmetry.
They further said RJio’s tariff rates are non-compliant and discriminatory, to which the regulator had intervened to ensure compliance of the terms and conditions of the licence relating to interconnection, and the provisions of the standards of quality of service (QoS) in the Mobile Telephone Service Regulations, 2009.
Sharma, however, did not say if the regulator would take any action against the incumbent operators for not speeding up RJio’s interconnection.
“Ultimately TRAI has to take a view according to the law, as per legal position, on such issues,” he said.