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India’s 4G newcomer reportedly accuses rivals of unlawfully withholding PoIs.
Reliance Jio Infocomm has accused rivals Idea Cellular and Vodafone India of unlawfully delaying the release of additional points of interconnection (PoIs).
The Press Trust of India reported on Sunday that India’s 4G newcomer demanded that the two operators to make available more PoIs, in accordance with directions issued last week by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
The watchdog has given mobile operators until today to resolve the dispute, which kicked off when Jio began offering free calls and very cheap mobile data across the country, leading to problems for Jio customers placing calls to other networks.
According to Sunday’s PTI report, Jio said in a letter to the TRAI that the call-drop rate on 8 October was 87% on Vodafone’s network, and 67% on Idea’s.
Jio insisted that any issues regarding traffic originating from its network are caused by Idea’s and Vodafone’s "unlawful and illegal delay/denial to adequately augment the PoIs."
Jio said it needs enough interconnection points to support its rapidly-growing customer base.
The operator predicts that it will have 75 million subscribers by the end of the year, and 100 million by the end of next March.
