However, Bharti, Vodafone and Idea are expected to press for a higher mobile termination rate (MTR) than the INR0.14 (€0.0019) per minute set by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
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As per reports, Reliance Jio users are facing call drops issue due to which the telecom player is going to ask for additional points of intersection in an one-on-one meeting with the top three incumbent telcos. “Though telecom operators are given time of 90 days to provide inter-connection, it is only applicable in the case of normal inter-connection when the networks are operational and there is additional capacity available”, an official source said.
“Based on industry practice, 12,500 E1 ports (interconnect points, with technical parameters) are required for 22 million subscribers, which details have been provided to the Cellular Operators’ Association of India member operators”, said a Reliance Industries statement on August 18. “Never, ever, has such a high asymmetry been observed with a new operator in the past”, Idea said in statement. They are likely to demand a higher termination charge on the grounds that they need more money to spruce up their networks to handle a potential deluge of voice traffic from Jio, triggered by the latter’s free voice offering till December 31.
Idea Cellular on Monday said that it is expanding its capacity to enable 6.5 million subscribers of Reliance Jio to connect to its network.
Ideal estimates that calls from almost 2.97 million unique Jio subscribers terminated on its network in August 2016.
“The Company is incurring increasing costs due to this high level of traffic asymmetry”. Unless controlled, this induced traffic asymmetry is expected to exacerbate the loss in the coming months.
The Telecom venture of the largest business operator Mukesh Ambani is now is a hot brand over the town which heads towards the Reliance Digital stores for the Jio SIM Cards.
“We await Regulatory intervention to address this fundamental issue of induced asymmetry of traffic and ensure compliance to the existing Regulatory Principles of IUC Compliance, Non-Discrimination, and Non-Predation, as per TRAI’s 30th Amendment to Telecommunication Tariff Order dated 16th January 2004”, Idea said.
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Welcoming Jio, Idea said it remains committed to “facilitate its seamless entry into the hyper-competitive market” and “will continue to support all new operators for all their reasonable, fair and legitimate requirements of POIs”.
