Reliance Jio Cries Foul Over Bharti Airtel’s “Misleading” Statement

Mukesh Ambani promoted Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. has hit back at its rival Bharti Airtel Ltd. accusing it of issuing misleading statements on providing adequate points of interconnect (POIs).

The "malicious and misleading" statement is meant to divert attention from the anti-consumer and anti-competitive practices of Bharti Airtel, a media release by Reliance Jio said.

The country’s largest telecom operator, Airtel had earlier on Tuesday said that the latest entrant had been provided PoIs at an “unprecedented pace”, well above the customer growth projections provided by Reliance Jio. Airtel had gone on to add that the over 35,000 PoIs given to Reliance Jio is far higher than the comparable capacity given to other operators. It put the blame on Reliance Jio for being unable to utilise the capacity.

Reliance Jio, in its release, claims that over 2.6 crore national long distance calls fail daily, amounting to a 53.4 percent call drop rate as against the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's norm of 0.5 percent. It must be noted that the call failure rate within a circle was at 0.6 percent as of January 31, according to the release.

It argued that Airtel's claim of providing over 35,000 PoIs is misleading as they haven't even completed port allocation, which is the first step of implementation for over 1,100 PoIs. It added that Airtel is deliberately delaying the process.

Reliance Jio also said that comparison with POIs allocated to other operators is completely arbitrary, and Airtel is bound under the law to provide adequate points of interconnect.