TRAI calls meet as incumbents allege norm violation by RJio

New Delhi: Amid the blame game between existing players like Airtel and entrant Reliance Jio over call drops, telecom regulator TRAI has called a meeting with operators on September 30 to discuss alleged violations of tariff orders by the newcomer.

"I have called for a meeting on Friday or may be Monday. Some telecom service companies had written to us alleging that Reliance Jio has violated some (tariff) order. So, for that they had sought a meeting," TRAI Chairman R S Sharma told reporters here.

Reliance Jio and incumbent operators Airtel, Vodafone and Idea are at loggerheads over 'points of interconnect' (PoI) to facilitate voice calls among their networks. The entrant has claimed that existing operators are not providing adequate PoIs (needed to complete calls to other networks), resulting in massive call drops.

Existing operators, in turn, have charged the newcomer of unleashing a "tsunami" of free traffic on their networks. Following Reliance Jio's complaint of call failures, TRAI had said it will issue show cause notices to operators for call drops that are far exceeding the norm.

"Those notices will probably be issued today or tomorrow. I don't remember the names of the companies but because of points of interconnection which has resulted in call failures that are more than the prescribed norms, those companies will be issued show cause notice," Sharma said.

Launching its commercial services on September 5, Reliance Jio announced free unlimited data and voice calling to its consumers till end of the year. From next year, voice calling would continue to be free of cost for Reliance Jio customers, while data would be charged at lower than the prevailing rates, the company had said.

During the test phase (before the commercial launch), Reliance Jio had started offering 90 days of free unlimited voice and data services. Incumbent operators had alleged that "freebies" cannot be extended beyond 90 days as anything beyond that becomes tariff.