War of Words: Reliance Jio’s ‘free-data-for-three-months’ plan under attack

Reliance Jio’s extravagant trial offer that allows customers to use unlimited data for free for three months is facing backlash from the top telecom operators of the country.

India’s top telecom operators Airtel, Vodafone, Idea wrote to the Department of Telecom to stop Reliance Jio’s test trial immediately. Telecom industry body COAI in its letter to Telecom Secretary, JS Deepak said that Jio has already rolled out their complete services under the guise of testing. "This is no test. This is the provisioning of full-¬blown and full-¬fledged services masquerading as tests, which bypass regulations and can potentially game policy features like the IUC (interconnection usage charge) regime, non¬ predatory pricing, fair competition etc". In an indirect response to the incumbent telecom players, Mukesh Ambani led Reliance Jio promptly wrote to the telecom regulator saying "steps taken by COAI in last few days by issuing press releases, alleging unfounded biases with the regulator and by writing letters against test trials are in fact attempts to sabotage the market entry of RJIL” Calling the allegations “malicious, unfounded, ill informed and frivolous”, Reliance Jio's letter says that the COAI's campaign appears to be an exercise to promote the vested interests of the incumbent dominant players.

Jio initially began testing its voice and data services with employees only scheme and now the company has over 1.5 million customers after they extended their free data trail offer to retail consumers. And this figure has not gone down well with the existing telcos "In order to ensure compliance to licence conditions and the Trai regulations and guidelines, we request your (DoT) urgent intervention in this matter and instruct the said licensee to stop such practices. Further, they should be instructed to immediately disconnect all such connections provided to general public under the guise of test connections," COAI said.

Reliance Jio’s launch has been long awaited and Jio puts the onus of delay in the commercial launch of its services on the incumbent players saying they are not offering the requisite interconnection bandwidth and that incumbents are using their dominant position to stifle other operators.

The key challenge however for the operators new and old is to maintain and grow their subscriber base and incumbent players accuse Jio of porting subscribers with the “so called trial offer”. In the letter to DoT, COAI said, "(Jio) has also tried to port subscribers from other operators, even though this is a pre¬launch test period".

While the war of words is in full swing between the telecom players now it’s time for the telecom department and telecom regulator of the country to give their verdict.

Image Source: AndroidCentral