Reliance Jio: Major telecom firms' chiefs to meet TRAI chairman -Governance Now

Reliance Jio: Major telecom firms' chiefs to meet TRAI chairman

Notices have been served to operators for not ensuring quality of service, said TRAI chairman RS Sharma

Pratap Vikram Singh | September 27, 2016 | New Delhi

#Reliance #Jio #TRAI #notice #telecom operators

The CEOs of major telecom companies would meet TRAI chairman RS Sharma on Friday to discuss a possible violation by Reliance Jio in offering free services for over three months, a permissible duration for promotions.

The information was given by Sharma while responding to questions in an industry meet organised by FICCI on Tuesday.

He said that notices have been served to operators for not ensuring quality of service and hence meeting the licensing conditions.

While speaking to media on Monday, the regulator had disclosed that almost 80 percent of the calls made been Reliance Jio and other operators fail. Most of the failure is a result of the lack of enough points of interconnect (POI) to be made available by the existing operators.

TRAI looked at call traffic details from September 15 to 19. "Looking at the data, the call failure figures are really unacceptable as against 0.5 percent quality of service standards," he said. Initially the regulator had asked the operators to settle the dispute over POI through bilateral discussions.

On a query on competition in the telecom sector, he said that as a regulator TRAI's job is to promote 'healthy' competition. He said that the industry should compete and also collaborate. That's how it will lead to optimal use of the natural resource (read air waves), he said.

"Why should consumers suffer? The consumers interest is paramount. That's why each one of us is here."

"If we can do (create) world class telecom infrastructure, why can't we have world class quality of service."

On a question whether differential pricing recommendations will be reviewed during the ongoing comprehensive network neutrality consultations, he said that nothing could be ruled out at this stage.

When Ankhi Das of Facebook queried about the inter agency coordination issues in rolling out a pilot on newer technologies, Sharma said, "I personally feel that we must try and experiment."

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