Trai will continue to monitor the situation of Points of Interconnect between Airtel and Jio

Amid escalation of war of words between Bharti Airtel and newcomer Reliance Jio over call connectivity, telecom regulator TRAI today emphasised that points of interconnect is a “consumer” issue which it will continue to monitor. “We have been deliberating on this issue…It is not an issue of (operator) A versus B. It is an issue of consumers,” TRAI Chairman RS Sharma said on the sidelines of IAMAI Digital Summit here. Noting that TRAI had intervened into the issue, Sharma said the regulator will continue to look at the situation. Yesterday, Mukesh Ambani-promoted Reliance Jio termed as “malicious and misleading”, rival Airtel’s claim that it has provided sufficient interconnect capacity to Jio and that latter has been unable to activate all the points of interconnect (PoIs) and utilise the said capacity. “Inspite of intervention by authorities and censure proceedings against Airtel, NLD call failure rate was at 53.4% as against TRAI norm of 0.5%. There has always been a lag in PoIs required and PoIs provided by Airtel resulting in severe service issues for Indian customers,” Jio had said. Its comments came as a response to a statement by Airtel that it has provided adequate capacity to Jio to serve over 190 million customers. Bharti Airtel said, “The PoIs have been provided well above the customer growth projection provided by Jio to Airtel. The capacity provided is ideal for serving over 190 million customers on the Jio network and is more than double of the 72.5 million total customers currently claimed by Jio.” Jio has been unable to activate all the points of interconnect (PoIs) and utilise the capacity provided, Airtel had alleged. PTI Disclaimer: Reliance Jio is owned by Reliance Industries, who also own Network18, the publisher of Firstpost and tech2.