RJio claims quantum of POI proposed by Vodafone is inadequate

Reliance Jio said, “The quantum of POIs proposed to be released by Vodafone is substantially less than the requirement estimated based on transparent workings shared with Vodafone."

Reliance Jio believes the number of point of interconnection proposed by Vodafone will not be enough. Photo: Reuters

Mukesh Ambani-backed Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJIL) on Friday, appreciated the decision of Vodafone in providing point of interconnection (POI). However, Reliance Jio also brought to notice that, the quantum of POIs proposed by Vodafone is substantially less than the requirement, estimated based on ‘transparent workings’ with Vodafone.

“Following guidance from Trai and clarifications from Reliance Jio regarding its commercial launch, Vodafone India has decided to increase the Points of Interconnect (PoIs) between the two operators by thrice and accordingly increase the capacity to connect,” Vodafone India said in a press release yesterday.

But Reliance Jio believes the number of point of interconnection proposed by Vodafone will not be enough.

It said, “The quantum of POIs proposed to be released by Vodafone is substantially less than the requirement estimated based on transparent workings shared with Vodafone."

Highlighting the urgency of the matter, the company said, “RJIL has been writing regularly to Vodafone regarding its requirement for interconnection capacity over the last few months. Necessary details have been provided from time to time, highlighting the urgency of the requirement and the impact on Quality of Service parameters.”

Further it added, “However, no action was taken for the last several weeks, resulting in non-compliance of TRAI regulation on quality of service which mandates that POI congestion should not affect more than 1 call in every 200 calls made.”

In last few weeks, this insufficient supply of POI, has worsen the situation for Reliance Jio, with over 80 calls failing out of every 100 call attempts.

Over 15 crore RJIL calls have failed on the Vodafone network in the last 10 days alone, it said in the release.

Led by POI congestion, the benefits of superior voice technology have also been denied to Indian customers despite RJIL's state-of-art-network roll-out, it said in the statement.

RJIL said, “Indian customers have not been able to enjoy RJIL's free voice offer as a result of such anti-competitive behaviour of incumbent operators.”

Going ahead, the Reliance Jio - which got launch on September 5, 2016, also faces hard times from Vodafone along with other incumbent operators in availing mobile number portability (MNP) facility.

Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular - have refused to enable the porting of mobile number connections to Jio.

In its letter, RJIL said,”The company, vide letters dated September 2, sent individually to Bharti Airtel, Idea and Vodafone, who are the incumbent dominant operators (IDOs), informing them that Jio would be commencing its service from September 5.”

RJIL has made around 201 requests to the IDOs – from which 83 request were made to Bharti Airtel, 56 request to Vodafone and remaining 62 requests to Idea.

Majority of the request were turned down by these IDOs, providing a contractual obligation violation as a reason.

In this regards RJIL said,"This is another example of disregard of license terms and their obligations under the Telecommunication Mobile Number Portability Regulations, 2009 (“MNP Regulations”) and TRAI directions."

RJIL hopes that Vodafone will enhance the PoI's sufficiently to meet their license obligation of QoS with immediate effect and maintain these parameters on an ongoing basis.

"Vodafone must also immediately make available MNP to all its subscribers opting to port to RJIL in accordance with the license terms and MNP regulations, " said RJIL.

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