RJio’s big chink in armour

For RJio which is making a high profile launch, a major chink in its armour is inter-connection.

As most of its subscribers will be making calls to older operators network, it will have to ensure that other operators provide it with abundant inter-connection points so that calls from Jio subscribers get seamlessly connected with subscribers of other operators.

In case incumbent operators try to play games, Jio subscribers will face problems in calling subscribers of other operators.

Jio has already blamed incumbent operators of not providing it with sufficient interconnection points during test run of its services. Insufficient interconnection points by old operators will impact the quality of calls by Jio subscribers calling to other operators. “Whenever a new operator comes, incumbent operator always play game in not providing interconnection,” said an industry official. He said that in few countries there is concept of interconnection exchanges which handle these issues but in India it is done “peer to peer” basis.

RCom and Tata Teleservices in the past had major issue with GSM operators for not providing interconnection. Infact Mr Ambani on Thursday appealed to incumbent operators to provide it with interconnection points.

“Incumbent operators have significant advantages over new entrants, since incumbents have well-established networks and existing customers. New entrants require fair access to both. Therefore, the onus is rightly on the incumbent operators not to misuse their market power by creating unfair hurdles, when it comes to providing points of interconnect between their networks and Jio’s network,” said Mr Ambani.

He said that such hurdles will serve only to create a poor experience for Jio customers who are trying to make calls to incumbent operators’ networks.

“In fact, in the last week alone, Jio customers suffered over 5 crores call failures to other networks because of insufficient interconnect capacity provided by incumbents. Giving the impression to common Jio customers that voice is not working, when actually the incumbent operators are deliberately dropping calls,” said Mr Ambani.