Provided Reliance Jio sufficient PoI capacity to serve over 190 million customers, says Bharti Airtel

Airtel on Tuesday said that it has provided a total of over 35,000 Points of Interconnect (PoIs) to Reliance Jio (RJio) in a period of five months.

“Of these 27, 719 PoIs - 79% of the total - have been dedicated for incoming calls from Jio customers, which is the highest amongst all operators,” the company said.

Airtel added that the PoIs provided were well above the customer growth projection provided by Jio to Airtel. 

“The capacity provided is ideal for serving over 190 million customers on the Jio network and is more than double of the 72.5 million total customers currently claimed by Jio. More importantly, the above mentioned capacity has been released at a staggering pace, something not seen before in the Indian telecom industry and is much more than comparable capacity provided by Airtel to other operators,” Airtel said.

Airtel went on to comparing the PoIs given to other networks in comparison to RJio.

“Vodafone with 202 million customers has been provided a total of approx. 40,600 PoIs by Airtel over a period of 21 years. Of these 23, 950 PoIs are for incoming calls – much less than what has been provided to RJio,” Airtel said.

Similarly, the company went on to list other telecoms as it said, “Idea with 185 million customers has been provided a total of approx. 38,130 PoIs by Airtel over a period of 21 years.Of these 23, 694 PoIs are for incoming calls – again much less than what has been provided to RJio. Reliance Communications with 86 million customers has been provided a total of approx. 13,400 PoIs by Airtel over 13 years. Of these 8415 PoIs are for incoming calls – less than one third of what has been provided to Jio. Telenor with 58 million customers has been provided a total of approx. 9000 POIs over seven years. Of these 6510 PoIs are for incoming calls – less than one fourth of what has been provided to Jio.”

The company went on to blame RJio’s need of bringing up the issue of PoIs as a matter of its own technical issues.

“It, therefore, appears that the constant rhetoric by Jio with regard to PoIs is aimed at covering up technical issues in their own network or their inability to activate the PoIs given,” Airtel added.

The company said that the provision of so many PoIs has impacted its own network and customers.

“On the contrary, due to continued non-compliance of TRAI’s tariff orders by Jio by providing free services for the past 5-6 months, there is a tsunami of incoming voice traffic on the Airtel network, thereby, impacting the service experience of our customers. The huge asymmetry in traffic due to Jio’s free offers has also resulted complete failure of the present IUC regime, which assumes nearly symmetric traffic while fixing the below cost termination charge. The present termination charge of 14 paise is less than half of the actual cost of terminating calls on the network, resulting in huge loss to the company,” Airtel said.

By the end of November, RJio had claimed to garner over 50 million subscribers with its initial scheme of providing high-speed 4G data for free.

RJio had filed a complaint with Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and Department of Telecommunication (DoT) over the issue that the incumbent telecoms were not playing by the rules in the matter of providing PoIs.

The new entrant claimed that PoIs were provided only after meeting with authorities.

Back in November RJio said, “RJIL (Reliance Jio Industries Ltd) welcomes 7,007 additional POIs provided by Airtel consequent to the meetings of the Hon’ble Minister of Communication and TRAI Chairman with the CEOs of Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and RJIL earlier this week on the subject of the breach of QoS parameters.”

“Ever since the commercial launch of services by Jio in September 2016, Airtel has honoured its regulatory obligations and ensured that there are no capacity constraints from its end and customers are not inconvenienced. In fact, Airtel has been providing PoIs to Jio, well ahead of the commencement of its commercial operations,” Airtel added.