MUMBAI: Bharti Airtel has informed the BSE that it has provided a total of over 35,000 points of interconnect (Pols) to Reliance Jio in record time of five months. Of these 27, 719 Pols – 79 per cent of the total – have been dedicated for incoming calls from Jio customers, which is the highest amongst all operators.
The Pols 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.
More importantly, the above mentioned capacity has been released at a staggering pace, something not seen before in the Indian telecom industry and is much more than comparable capacity provided by Airtel to other operators.
• Vodafone with 202 million customers has been provided a total of approx. 40,600 Pols by Airtel over a period of 21 years. Of these 23, 950 Pols are for incoming calls- much less than what has been provided to Jio.
• Idea with 185 million customers has been provided a total of approx. 38,130 Pols by Airtel over a period of 21 years. Of these 23, 694 Pols are for incoming calls- again much less than what has been provided to Jio.
• Reliance Communications with 86 million customers has been provided a total of approx.
13,400 Pols by Airtel over 13 years. Of these 8415 Pols are for incoming calls -less than one third of what has been provided to Jio.
• Telenor with 58 million customers has been provided a total of approx. 9000 POls over seven years. Of these 6510 Pols are for incoming calls – less than one fourth of what has been provided to Jio.
Ever since the commercial launch of services by Jio in September 2016, Airtel has honoured its regulatory obligations and ensured that there are no capacity constraints from its end and customers are not inconvenienced. In fact, Airtel has been providing Pols to Jio, well ahead of the commencement of its commercial operations.
It, therefore, appears that the constant rhetoric by Jio with regard to Pols is aimed at covering up technical issues in their own network or their inability to activate the Pols given.
On the contrary, due to continued non-compliance of TRAI’s tariff orders by Jio by providing free services for the past 5-6 months, there is a tsunami of incoming voice traffic on the Airtel network, thereby, impacting the service experience of our customers.
The huge asymmetry in traffic due to Jio’s free offers has also resulted complete failure of the present IUC regime, which assumes nearly symmetric traffic while fixing the below cost termination charge. The present termination charge of 14 paise is less than half of the actual cost of terminating calls on the network, resulting in huge loss to the company.
Allocation of Pols to operators by Airtel
