Reliance Jio to meet incumbents for resolving IUC issue

Reliance Jio commercially launched its services on September 5, offering disruptive services, therefore shaking up the entire telecom landscape in the country. Jio since its rollout has accused incumbent players of not releasing sufficient inter-connection points for its users.

Inter-connection is required to enable mobile users to make calls to customers of other telecom networks. A mobile operator levies inter-connection usage charge for each incoming call it gets from subscribers of another telecom network.

Since the launch of Jio, there has been a massive surge in the incoming traffic emerging out of Jio’s network to other incumbents, which has led to tensions between 3 GSM biggies and Reliance.

Last week, industry body COAI, representing incumbent telecom operators Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular said the players will meet to negotiate reasonable incremental capacity to be provided to Jio for interconnection.

Recently TRAI convened a meeting between Reliance Jio and incumbents Airtel, Vodafone and Idea, where the regulator asked the telecom player to resolve the dispute within themselves, keeping in mind that the end consumer doesn’t suffer and quality of service is maintained.

The incumbents have been arguing that they have to incur huge costs due to an asymmetry of traffic originating from Jio’s network.

Therefore, all this has been reflective in the performance of telecom stocks, which have lost ground since Jio’s launch.