Airtel welcomes Jio entry in telecom space, says will fulfil regulatory obligations

NEW DELHI: India’s top telecom service provider Bharti Airtel has welcomed the entry of Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio in the Indian telecom market.

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) chairman Mukesh Ambani has announced the launch of Reliance Jio service in Mumbai while addressing company’s 42nd Annual General Meeting of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) today.

“We welcome Reliance Jio’s entry to the digital world and wish them the very best. We also welcome Jio’s call to leading operators to work together. As a responsible operator we will fulfill all our regulatory obligations as we have always done," the companys aid in a statement.

"Over the last 20 years, Airtel has been contributing towards building a digitally enabled India and remains fully committed to and take leadership in supporting the Government’s Digital India vision. We will continue to innovate and deliver best-in-class products and services to our customers," said Ambani.

"At this time, I also want to direct my words to another important constituency – existing Indian telecom operators. Healthy competition is the lifeblood of a vibrant economy. It is the engine that drives innovation and customer value. No doubt, all of us operators will compete vigorously in the marketplace," he added.

"I am also sure that, while doing so, we will inspire each other to rise to even greater heights in our quest to serve Indian customers," said Ambani.

"However, Incumbent operators have significant advantages over new entrants, since incumbents have well- established networks and existing customers," he added.

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.

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.

This is the reason why telecom operators have legal obligations, as part of their license conditions, to provide Points of Interconnect to other operators.

Likewise, they have an obligation to also not to limit customers’ right to migrate to Jio using Mobile

Number Portability.

"I appeal to my fellow operators to do their part, both in letter and spirit, to create a fair and reciprocal framework of co-opetition that is good for India and good for Indian customers," said Ambani.