Telecom industry body blames regulator TRAI yet again for siding with Reliance Jio

India’s telecom regulator TRAI called upon incumbent telecom operators, Airtel, Idea, Vodafone along with new entrant Reliance Jio for a meeting after days of infighting. The telecom industry body COAI was the main front for the incumbent telecom operators in the whole fight but was not invited for the meeting with the regulator. The telecom industry body accused the TRAI of siding with Jio, “COAI has been kept out of the TRAI meeting at the insistence of RIL Jio, and TRAI acquiesced to their demand in an unprecedented manner”, said COAI. Its not the first time the COAI has accused the TRAI of working in interest of Mukesh Ambani owned Reliance Jio, earlier the COAI had written to the PMO saying that many of the policy changes TRAI is looking at will eventually benefit Jio. The telcos were clashing mainly on the issue of ‘point of interconnect’ which essentially help operators to connect calls from one operator’s network to other. Even after the launch of Reliance Jio services, this matter remains unresolved. In the days leading to the announcement of Jio services, the telecom industry saw one of the biggest slugfest between the incumbent telecom operators and Reliance Jio mainly on Jio’s long running free test trial and points of interconnection. Finally the TRAI decided to call the telcos in (albeit leaving out COAI) and hear both sides of the story to try and end the never ending tussle.

Telcos likely to have raised many issues to the TRAI around Reliance Jio’s entry in the market. Reliance Jio services were launched on the 5th of September after a pretty long test period that started from December 2015. While Jio has filed its tariff with the TRAI, Jio will continue to provide services for free under its “Welcome Offer” till the end of December 2016. It looks like the Jio telcos do not buy Jio’s welcome offer as Reliance Jio and the incumbent operators have been majorly sparring over points of interconnection and MNP.

COAI had written to the telecom regulator to be included in the meeting but did not get any response from the regulator and the meeting took place with Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and Rel Jio.