Reliance Jio given sufficient PoIs, unable to activate them: Airtel

New Delhi: India's leading telecom service provider on Tuesday claimed that it gave sufficient point of interconnect (PoIs) to Reliance Jio but that the latter was unable to activate and utilize them.

Airtel claimed that it provided adequate capacity to Jio to serve over 190 million customers which is far above the 72 million customers that Jio has.

This statement from the country's leading telecom service provider comes amid the ongoing tussle between Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio over call connectivity issues.

"The PoIs have been provided 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," Bharti Airtel said in a statement.

Jio has been unable to activate all the points of interconnect (PoIs) and utilise the capacity provided, it added.

Slamming Jio's "constant rhetoric" over PoIs, Bharti Airtel said it appears to be "aimed at covering up technical issues in their own network or their inability to activate the PoIs given".

"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 xperience of our customers," said Bharti Airtel, which has 265.8 million subscribers.

Airtel emphasised the "huge asymmetry in traffic" due to Jio's free offers has also resulted in "complete failure" of the present IUC (Interconnection Usage Charges) 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," it said.

Airtel further said it has provided a total of over 35,000 PoIs to Reliance Jio in "record time of just five months".

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

The company said that the capacity provided to Reliance Jio is much more than comparable capacity provided by Airtel to other operators.

"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 Jio," it said.

With PTI Inputs