The ongoing battle between existing telecom operators and impending entrant Reliance Jio Infocomm has intensified.
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While the COAI letter to PMO dated August 22 did not name Jio, the target was clear as the Reliance Industries arm is the only telecom operator now holding beta-tests, or trials, in the country, offering free voice and data services to some 1.5 million users.
The letter was written to COAI Director General Rajan S. Mathews, copies of which were dispatched to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Communications Minister Manoj Sinha, PM’s Principal Secretary Misra, TRAI Chairman R.S. Sharma and Telecom Commission Chairman J.S. Deepak.
The letter from COAI said that the internet usage traffic generated by the so-called beta-test rivals the combined data of the rest of the operators who have been in the business for 12-20 years The spectrum being used by the company has been allocated for commercial purposes, yet it does not yield any revenue or share.
It said 2.5-3 million users for Reliance Jio constituted a commercial launch.
Reliance Jio is also a COAI member.
Reliance, which is a member of the COAI, alleged that it received an email from COAI at 1505 hours today stating it would be sending a letter to the government on Jio’s test service but the letter was actually submitted to the government officials “as early as 1250 hrs”.
Jio said prior to the COAI e-mail, there had been no communication in any manner on the intent or contents of COAI’s attached letters. Moreover, it also pointed out that the incumbents are violating licensing conditions with regard to providing interconnection, and mobile number portability.
On Monday, RJio struck out at the Cellular Operators Association of India in yet another attack, by calling the association a mouthpiece for vested interests and that it was acting maliciously against RJio. #Reliance Jio asked it’s employees to Port to its network.
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In its latest letter, COAI listed other examples of non-compliance by the “single operator”, including “launch of commercial operations without filing tariffs with the Trai, evasion of compliances required of commercial operations, generating pseudo traffic through free offers, and exploiting the below full cost IUC to dump traffic on other operators”.
