Airtel, Idea, Vodafone may give additional points of intersection to Reliance Jio but only on one condition

Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio Infocomm is going to ask for additional points of intersection during its meeting with Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular.

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.

In return of additional intersection points, the incumbent players are expected to demand for a mobile termination charge higher than the 14 paise/minute fixed by the sectoral watchdog due to the huge inbound traffic from Jio.

Reliance Jio may ask for around 7,000 additional points of intersection on an immediate basis.

Recently, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had asked Reliance Jio and top three incumbent players to resolve the interconnect matter.

The TRAI warned it would intervene if quality of services declines and consumers suffer.

But, the top three telcos said they would provide additional PoIs as needed, they are in no mood to give in to Jio's demands for additional PoIs on the latter's terms.

Last month, Jio had demanded 12,500 intersection points from the top three incumbents to initially meet the needs of 22 million customers, but the GSM biggies only released 1,400 PoIs to the 4G entrant.

"We understand that the PoIs provided by us to Reliance Jio is about double of what they need based on the current exchange of traffic with all other operators in India. Having said that, we have invited Reliance Jio for a discussion to understand their additional requirements and will be happy to provide more PoIs," an Airtel spokesperson told ET over email.

"Our current allocation of PoIs would in normal circumstances cater to 4.65 million such subscribers, indicating a buffer of 57% in calling capacity, (but) Idea has now decided to proactively, expand capacity with Jio to over 6.5 million subscribers, with the release of 196 additional POIs, shortly,” Idea told ET.