Airtel offers Jio PoIs for 15 million users

After Idea Cellular, Airtel, the largest Indian telecom operator, has offered interconnects or PoIs to Reliance Jio to help the newest operator serve its customers who were facing massive call drops since launch.

Thanks to the additional PoIs from Airtel, numbering three times higher than the currently given PoIs, Jio would be able to serve 15 million customers.

''Based on the current traffic pattern with all other operators, this capacity is sufficient to serve over 15 million customers, which is significantly higher than Jio's existing customer base,'' Bharti Airtel said in a statement.

On Monday, Idea Cellular had offered additional PoIs to Jio that could serve 6.5 million customers.

However, contrary to the claims of the two operators, the companies had not offered the PoIs on their own, but the move followed the intervention of Trai last week, when the sector regulator met representatives of Jio as also the top three operators – Airtel, Vodafone and Idea.

''Following its bilateral discussions with Reliance Jio (Jio), it will provide additional PoIs to Jio. Airtel had extended an invitation to Jio to discuss its requirement of additional PoI,'' Airtel said in a statement.

However, having agreed to release the point of interconnections, Airtel said that it would also need to take cognizance of the massive asymmetry in the volume of traffic between the two networks and ensure that the quality of service for Airtel customers was not affected.

 ''Airtel has been providing PoIs to Jio, well ahead of the commencement of its commercial operations. With the latest augmentation, the total number of PoIs will become three times the present number of point of interconnections (PoIs). Based on the current traffic pattern with all other operators, this capacity is sufficient to serve over 15 million customers, which is significantly higher than Jio's existing customer base,'' the Airtel statement read.