Airtel has provided Jio interconnect capacity to serve over 190 mn customers
07 Feb 2017
Bharti Airtel, India's largest telecommunications services provider, has provided a total of over 35,000 Points of Interconnect (PoIs) to Reliance Jio Infocomm in five months. Of these 27,719 PoIs – 79 per cent of the total - have been dedicated for incoming calls from RJIo customers, which is the highest amongst all operators.
The capacity provided is ideal for serving over 190 million customers on the Jio network and is more than double of the 72.5 million total customers currently claimed by Jio. The PoIs have been provided well above the customer growth projection provided by Jio to Airtel, the company said in a statement.
More importantly, the capacity has been released at a staggering pace, it added.
The PoIs provided to other telecom companies were much less than what has been provide to RJIo, it added.
Airtel has provided Vodafone India, which has 202 million customers, a total of about 40,600 PoIs over a period of 21 years, of which 23,950 PoIs were for incoming calls. The company provided Idea Cellular, which has a total of 185 million customers, 38,130 PoIs over 21 years, of which 23, 694 PoIs were for incoming calls.
The New Delhi-based also provided 13,400 PoIs to Reliance Communications, which has 86 million customers over the past 13 years, of which 8,415 PoIs were for incoming calls. It provided Telenor, which has 58 million customers, a total of about 9,000 POIs over seven years, of which 6,510 PoIs were for incoming calls.
Ever since the commercial launch of services by Jio in September 2016, Airtel has honoured its regulatory obligations and ensured that there are no capacity constraints from its end and customers are not inconvenienced. In fact, Airtel has been providing PoIs to Jio, well ahead of the commencement of its commercial operations, it added.
It, therefore, appears that the constant rhetoric by Jio with regard to PoIs is aimed at covering up technical issues in their own network or their inability to activate the PoIs given.