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COAI members reportedly accuse new operator of choking their networks with outbound voice traffic.
Indian telcos on Wednesday claimed that Reliance Jio is masquerading full-blown commercial services under the guise of a trial, flooding their networks with outbound voice traffic.
The Business Standard reported that the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), a lobby group representing GSM telcos, wrote to telecom secretary J S Deepak, arguing that Jio’s 1.5 million ‘customers’ are making full use of its free trial service, which has been up and running since December, and is now causing a traffic imbalance at interconnection points.
"This is no test. This is the provisioning of full-blown and full-fledged services, masquerading as tests, which bypass regulations and can potentially game policy features like the IUC (interconnection usage charges) regime, non-predatory pricing and fair competition," the COAI said in its letter.
The letter was sent in response to one sent by Reliance Jio to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) complaining that rival operators are not providing sufficient interconnect bandwidth.
However, the COAI claims that interconnect bandwidth is being swallowed up by Jio customers making millions of free calls.
"We asked for clarity on whether this is compliant with regulations, as 1.5 million subscribers are tantamount to a commercial launch as the trial period has been extended yet again and networks of our operators are getting choked," said COAI director general Rajan Matthews, in the Business Standard.
Indeed, Reliance Jio’s commercial launch has been a long time coming.
The most recent rumours suggest the network will go into full service on 15 August, coinciding with India’s independence day.
Reports of Jio’s imminent launch should be taken with a pinch of salt though.
Hopes were raised in June when Jio’s Website went live, giving prospective customers an opportunity to learn about the various Jio apps on offer and to register their interest.
Reports at the time claimed that the company had begun selling 4G smartphones equipped with Jio SIM cards in India’s major cities; however, it was allegedly a soft launch, and not a fully-fledged commercial launch.
Reliance Jio maintains that it plans to kick off its 4G services in fiscal 2016-2017, which began in April. Some have suggested the launch could take place as late as December.
