Reliance Jio blames incumbent operators for 75% call failure on its network

New Delhi: Charging incumbent operators of "anti-competitive behaviour", Reliance Jio Infocomm on Thursday said over 75 percent of calls on its network are still failing due to insufficient interconnection facility provided by other operators.

"The customers of India have continued to face severe quality of service issues owing to inadequate release of points of interconnection by the incumbent mobile operators to Jio. Call failure rates continue to be severe with over 75 calls failing out of every 100 call attempts on the networks of some of the operators," Reliance Industries said in a statement.

"Indian public have not been able to enjoy Jio's free voice offer as a result of such anticompetitive behaviour of incumbent operators in breach of license conditions," the statement said.

The company is offering free phone call and 4G mobile broadband service till December 31.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had set a deadline of October 17, 2016 to mobile operators to resolve the matter so that customers do not experience poor quality of service.

Trai has observed high level of congestion in telecom networks leading to call failure on Reliance Jio's network.

"This is in breach of Quality of Service regulation that not more than 5 calls out of every 1,000 call attempts can fail. While Jio has rolled out a state-of-the-art network, the benefits of superior voice technology have been denied to public at large due to the POI congestion," RJio said.

Jio has been alleging that Airtel, Vodafone and Idea are denying it required number of interconnection points. However, the incumbents have said that they have provided sufficient points of interconnection (PoIs) to meet requirement of Jio as per industry average.

In the letter dated October 12, marked to Telecom Secretary and Trai Chairman, Jio alleged average call drop experienced by its customer as on October 8 was as high as 87 per cent on Vodafone and 67 per cent on Idea network for NLD service.

The company has sought interconnection facility for supporting 100 million mobile subscribers by March 2017.

Jio has achieved this growth faster than any other telecom operator or start up in the world including the likes of Facebook, WhatsApp and Skype, it added.

"Jio has created a world record by crossing 16 million subscribers in its first month of operations (September 2016)," the statement said.