RJio's letter to Trai: Incumbent operators violating number portability norms

Reliance Jio – the new entrant in telecom market, brought to telecom regulators (Trai) notice over illegal and rebellious action of other incumbent operators namely – Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular - who have refused to enable the porting of mobile number connections to Jio.

“It is important to note that this is being done in blatant disregard to license terms and their obligations under the Telecommunication Mobile Number Portability Regulations, 2009 (“MNP Regulations”) and Trai directions,” Jio said in a statement.

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

Inspite of being under legal and contractual obligation, to port numbers after a valid request being made, the IDOs have still rejected all the requests of Jio made for porting between September 5 – September 12.

Rjio has made around 201 request 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, Rjio said, “These rejections are in addition to the rejection of MNP request of 4919 corporate mobile numbers issued to employees and members of Reliance Industries Group by Bharti Airtel in August 2016.”

This was inspite of confirmation from Bharti Airtel that there were no outstanding dues and that the MNP process of Rjio could be completed.

Rjio explains,”It has caused enormous and irreparable damage to RJIL as potential customers may decide not to subscribe to Jio's services owing to the lack of MNP facility.

The Jio has duly completed its MNP testing and was certified as MNP compliant by telecome enforcement, resource and monitoring cells of all service areas in June.