India’s Jio fights with incumbents over PoIs

India’s Reliance Jio Infocomm is in an ongoing battle with the nation’s three incumbent operators over interconnection capacity.

Jio, a newcomer to the mobile scene, is accusing Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular of refusing to provide enough PoIs to handle the volume of calls between Jio customers and those of the incumbents.

The operator said that as of mid-September, Airtel had provided just 651 operational E1s, Vodafone just 467 and Idea just 526. In the past 15 days, Airtel had provided one new E1 to Vodafone’s five and Idea’s three.

Jio said based on industry practices, the operator estimates it requires an interconnection capacity of 4,000 to 5,000 E1s per operator. The shortfall is resulting in over 100 million call failures per day between Jio and the three incumbent operators combined.

“The continued denial of requisite PoI’s is in clear violation of the License conditions and TRAI regulations on quality of service by the incumbent operators,” the company said.

“The deliberate move to not provide sufficient interconnection capacity, as is apparent from the above numbers, is clearly aimed at hindering RJIL’s entry into the sector and is depriving Indian customers from enjoying superior HD voice services being offered by RJIL.”

But in an interview with the Hindu Business Line, Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal has insisted  that the company has already provided 2,100 PoIs, and said the process is ongoing.

He also downplayed the conflict with Jio, stating that the fight between the disruptive start-ups and the incumbents has already been de-escalated.