Reliance Jio users experience over 52 crore call drops, blame it on Airtel, Vodafone and Idea

Reliance Jio Infocommm is blaming its rivals Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular for not providing enough points of interconnection (PoIs), which is worsening the call drop issue.

Even though Airtel said it will provide additional PoIs, Reliance Jio users are having a tough time to make calls. Reliance Jio officials told ET, “We hope Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular will enhance the PoIs sufficiently to meet their license obligation of QoS (quality of service) with immediate effect and maintain these parameters on an ongoing basis.”

Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio said that the No.1 telecom company, didn't act "for the last several weeks" on the Jio's periodic requests for more PoIs.

"Necessary details have been provided to Airtel from time to time, highlighting the urgency of the requirement and the impact on Quality of Service parameters. However, no action was taken for the last several weeks, resulting in non-compliance of TRAI regulation on quality of service which mandates that POI congestion should not affect more than 1 call in every 200 calls made," Jio told ET.

According to Jio, out of every 100 over 75 calls from Jio networks have failed. More than 22 crore calls made from Jio networks to Airtel networks have failed and around 52 crore calls in total, made from Jio to the three major operators - Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular, have failed.

"RJIL has been raising the issue of insufficient POIs as anti-competitive aimed at hindering the entry of a new operator. We have repeatedly appealed to the incumbent operators to create a fair and reciprocal framework of coopetition that is good for India and good for Indian customers," Jio told ET.

"Voice traffic on its (Jio's) network is in line with industry trends and as expected for any new operator in the early days of operations of any new operator, there are more outgoing calls than incoming calls," Jio told ET. Further adding it said, “that the telco's outgoing traffic was less than two calls per customer per hour even during peak traffic period - spread across all operators - which requires only a reasonable number of PoIs.”