Idea augments interconnect capacity, Jio says call drop rate is still 75 per cent

Idea Cellular on Friday said it has augmented interconnect capacity for Jio by 230 per cent, but the latter said its subscribers still faced 75 per cent call failures while trying to connect with the network of the incumbent player. “Idea has now provisioned 1,865 ports for access, from 565 earlier – a 230 per cent increase in capacity. Simultaneously, the (national long distance service capacity is also being expanded by nearly 50 per cent,” Idea said in statement. “With this huge capacity expansion, over 2,100 ports will now be available for traffic between Idea and Jio, allowing sufficient buffer for the future,” the incumbent player added. But in a statement later, Jio said over 750 calls per 1,000 were failing per day between Idea and Jio networks, which translates to 4 crore calls failing per day. “Over 12 crore calls fail daily between Jio and the networks of Airtel, Vodafone and Idea. This is a breach of license conditions by the incumbent operators and severely impacts customer interests. This is against zero call failures on the Jio network,” the company said in the statement. The proposed augmented capacity by Idea is less than 40 cent of the initial firm demand placed by Reliance Jio based on transparent workings shared with Idea several months ago, it said and wondered how quality parameters will be met by it in such a scenario. “Furthermore, the manner of release of new capacity by Idea and the other incumbent operators is very disillusioning insofar as it is being reflected as a favour to Jio. All operators are obligated as per license conditions to provide interconnection such that quality of service parameters are met.” It said this was a license obligation with favours being made towards Jio and sought urgent action. IANS Disclaimer: Reliance Jio is owned by Reliance Industries, who also own Network18, the publisher of Firstpost and tech2