Mukesh Ambani ask telcos to fulfil their regulatory obligations in “letter and spirit”

Reliance Jio has now formally announced that its services will be available from the 5th of September all across the country. In its latest release, Reliance Jio re-iterates that it is looking forward to co-operation from the telecom industry. Reliance Jio says “We appreciate the announcements made by the incumbent operators welcoming us to the industry and assuring that they will fulfil all their regulatory obligations. We expect the incumbent operators to fulfil their regulatory obligations in letter and spirit.” Telecom operators have given their responses to Jio’s big bang launch, mostly welcoming the new player in the industry. However, in the days leading up to the Reliance Jio launch the telecom industry saw the biggest infighting the industry has ever seen on uncertainty over Jio’s commercial launch and it’s free trial test services. Telecom industry body, COAI had said that telcos will not provide anymore inter-connection capacity to Jio unless the company launches its services commercially.

Reliance Jio has now fulfilled all the requirements to commercially launch its services, “Jio has intimated the Department of Telecommunications (“DOT”), Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (“TRAI”) and the security agencies regarding the commencement of its wireless telecommunication services in all 22 service areas from 5 September 2016”, Jio said. With this Jio is now formally a telecom operator in the country and the existing operators are obligated to provide inter-connection capacity and mobile number portability facility to Reliance Jio. But so far Jio says that its test users are facing huge interconnect and MNP issues and hopes the situation will improve now, “We expect and hope that following commencement of services by Jio, the incumbent operators would fulfil their obligations to provide adequate inter-connection and MNP facility”.

Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio has certainly rattled the industry with the kind of tariff and offers it is entering the market, from free voice services to slashed down data tariff to completely free overall services till December end for all consumers. This announcement has already led to telcos adjusting their tariff right after Jio’s announcement. Even then along with the big launch announcement, on the same platform Ambani had also talked about more co-operation from existing operators for inter-connection capacity. Clearly, quality of voice services continues to be a big concern for Jio and the company wants to make sure that the issue is sorted out even if it means reporting the call-failures from operators publicly, Jio says, “In the spirit of putting the customer-first and complete transparency, Jio would report its operator-wise call failure numbers on its website ‘www.jio.com’, on a regular basis.”