Jio-1, Rest-0

The first round of battle between Jio and its rivals seems to have gone in favour of the latest entrant to the telecom market. However, the war is far from over.

- Ammar Zaidi

Reliance Industries Chiarman(RIL) Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio Infocomm appears to have won the battle in the long-drawn interconnection war with its rivals. Last month, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) imposed penalties on Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular for denying interconnection to Jio.

The telecom regulator levied a Rs 50-crore penalty per circle on the three incumbent players, which would total more than Rs 3,000 crore. According to the TRAI, Airtel and Vodafone have to pay Rs 1,050 crore each and Idea Cellular Rs 950 crore. The penalty has been imposed for violating quality of service norms.

"Interconnection is extremely important from a consumer perspective. Telecom users cannot communicate with each other or connect with services they demand unless necessary interconnection arrangements are in place," the TRAI has said in the letter to each of the three incumbent operators.

In mid-July, Jio had written to the TRAI accusing Bharti Enterprises Chairman Sunil Mittal's Bharti Airtel and the other two telecom players of providing less than one-fourth of interconnection points to complete calls. The telecom regulator had then communicated to all the three operators to do the needful.

Mr Ambani's telecom venture had said that 2 crore calls failed daily as Airtel, the country's largest telecom operator, dilly-dallied on adequate points of interconnection (PoIs). Airtel had retorted by calling the statement a "constant rhetoric" that might be a "ploy" by Jio to cover up some technical issues in its own network, which was causing call failures.

Raging war