Telecom spat cools down: Vodafone to hike PoIs for Jio

Telecom firm Vodafone India on Thursday said that it has decided to increase interconnection capacity with Reliance Jio's network.

"Following guidance from Trai (the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) and clarifications from Jio regarding its commercial launch, Vodafone India has decided to increase the points of interconnect (POIs) between the two operators by thrice and accordingly, increase the capacity to connect," Vodafone India said in a statement.

Vodafone is the third incumbent operator, after Idea Cellular and Airtel, to have agreed to increase interconnection points for Reliance Jio, paving the way for easy exchange of calls between subscribers of the two networks.

Interconnection is required to enable mobile users to make calls to customers of other telecom networks. A mobile operator levies inter-connection usage charge for each incoming call it gets from a subscriber of another network.

Incumbent carriers have been demanding higher interconnection charges compared with 14 paise they get for each incoming mobile call on their networks.

Reliance Jio, which commercially launched its services on 5 September, has accused the existing players of not releasing sufficient interconnection ports which it feels is leading to call drops.

"Vodafone India has always provided points of interconnect (PoIs) to other operators for all their fair, reasonable and legitimate requirements and will continue to do so," Vodafone said.

"Vodafone is hopeful that all issues it has raised with Trai and Jio will be duly considered and resolved at the earliest."

Trai has indicated that it will take strong action against telecom operators found responsible for poor quality of service.

Jio has alleged that the situation on its network has deteriorated significantly in the last few weeks due to insufficient PoIs, with over 75 calls failing out of every 100 call attempts. As per the rules, not more than 5 calls can fail in every 1,000 calls made during a month.

It further said that over 22 crore calls have failed on the Airtel network while 52 crore have failed cumulatively on the networks of the three incumbent operators -- Airtel, Vodafone and Idea in about last 10 days.

To create a truly connected, inclusive and Digital India, it is vital to have a level-playing field between providers offering the same service, encourage innovations and judiciously use a portfolio of technologies - 2G, 3G and 4G to service the evolving needs of consumers across the country," Vodafone said.