News
Telcos likely to drive hard bargain as newcomer seeks to ease network congestion.
One-to-one meetings between Reliance Jio Infocomm and Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular will take place this week as India’s 4G newcomer seeks additional points of interconnect (POI) to tackle dropped calls placed by its customers to other networks.
A source cited by the Economic Times on Tuesday said the company will likely ask for 6,500-7,000 extra POIs from its three rivals in order to address the estimated growth in its subscriber base and voice traffic.
However, Bharti, Vodafone and Idea are expected to press for a higher mobile termination rate (MTR) than the INR0.14 (€0.0019) per minute set by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). India’s incumbent telcos argue that they need to upgrade their networks to cope with the deluge of inbound voice traffic from Reliance Jio, which has been offering free calls since 1 September.
In a separate ET report late last week, Bharti Airtel agreed to increase the number of POIs available to Jio, while the Press Trust of India reported on Tuesday that Idea Cellular has taken a similar decision.
However, according to Tuesday’s ET report, the number of additional POIs provided by Bharti and Idea fall well below what Reliance Jio is expected to request later this week. Nonetheless, the operators insist that they are providing a sufficient number to cope with demand.
The news emerged days after the TRAI hosted a meeting between the four operators in a bid to resolve the POI dispute.
