NEW DELHI: With the entry of the telecom venture Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited unit of Reliance Industries, the existing operators are likely to have tough times ahead. On Friday, Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries along with his son Akash Ambani met the telecom secretary J S Deepak for about 80 minutes to discuss rollout plans of his telecom venture Reliance Jio.
According to sources, during the meeting, Ambani provided a full update of rollout plans of Reliance Jio’s 4G services, which in trial phase alone has garnered 1.5 million users. Reliance Industries has already said its telecom arm will launch 4G LTE (long term evolution, a technology standard) commercial services at “substantially lower” rates than rivals, setting the stage for a bruising tariff war.
Discussions involved the company’s position on the standoff relating to points of interconnect with the existing cellular networks. Reliance Jio has accused GSM operators of blocking its entry into the market. GSM operators in turn have threatened to approach the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on alleged license norm violation by Reliance Jio. Reliance Jio has also written a letter to the telecom regulator Trai, calling for action against dominant players, including Airtel, for denying it inter-connection in ‘breach’ of the licence agreement.
Earlier this week, COAI said its members have provided Reliance Jio Infocomm sufficient capacity to support 10 times more than the customer base it currently claims, and attributed congestion in the network to free calls and data service the company is currently offering.
COAI also countered RJio claims of having 1.5 million customers in the trial phase and, citing reports, alleged that the new entrant has activated 2 - 3 million subscribers. Reliance Jio hit back accusing existing operators of not releasing sufficient number of interconnection ports and submitted to Trai that it will need 12,727 network interconnection for mobile services and 3068 points for STD call facility.