After alleging that recent TRAI consultations on Interconnection charges favored new entrants, the COAI lashed out against Reliance Jio’s network trails that apparently has onboarded 1.5 million ‘test subscribers’. The amount of traffic being generated from the Jio trials are “choking” Points of Interconnection (PoI)—physical connection between two different telcos—and “impairing” quality of service of other operators, alleged COAI in a letter addressed to the DoT. What’s interesting is the fact that Jio is also a part of COAI and has retaliated to the allegations of its co-members (from COAI) and termed them “malicious unfounded, ill-formed, and frivolous and are contrary to actual facts", in a letter addressed to the DoT. MediaNama has reviewed a copy of the letter. Reacting to this, COAI said that Jio has not provided information about its tariff plans and that the operator (jio) has not filed tariff information with TRAI either, as required. Even though Jio is collecting Customer Acquisition Forms (CAF), ‘we aren’t sure is these have been offered for any audit purposes’, alleged COAI. The lobby body further points out that Jio has also “tried” to port subscribers from other operators, even though the network is on test mode. “Neither the Unified License agreement nor any other DoT guidelines provide for any such test/trial situations. In the 20 years since privatization (of telecom), operators have routinely cooperated by commissioning initial Point of Interconnection with 1-2 E1s, which is all that is required for testing.” Last month Jio said that the average monthly data consumption on…
