Reliance Jio covering glitch in its own network by raising PoI issue: Airtel

NEW DELHI: Amid the ongoing tussle between Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio over call connectivity issues, Airtel has claimed it has provided adequate capacity to Jio to serve over 190 million customers, but the latter has not been able to activate and utilize it.

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

Airtel emphasized 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% 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.