Call failures between Reliance Jio and top three telcos showing signs of improvement

In a huge respite for the latest entrant into the Indian telecom sector, the number of daily call failures between Reliance Jio and India's top-three telcos has reduced over the last fortnight, says a report in The Economics Times.

Citing two individuals aware of the developments, the publication said that, calls with India’s biggest telecom company, Bharti Airtel that showed the most improvement with the provisioning of additional points of interconnection (PoIs).

Apparently, the call failures between Jio and Airtel's networks slid down to 56 percent of all calls from nearly 73 percent on September 23, while it's at 62 percent with Idea Cellular, compared with over 75 percent earlier. With Vodafone India, the failure rate is still quite high at 75 percent but still better from 83.5 percent recorded previously.

It's important to note that call failure isn’t same as call drop. A call drop is when a call connects but then falls, however with call failure, the call doesn’t even connect.

Since Reliance Jio’s official launch, there have been heated arguments over the PoIs and the call failure issue, with Ambani-led Jio accusing incumbent operators of using it as a means to sabotage its entry by not releasing adequate PoIs.

Jio complained to TRAI, accusing the top telcos of violating quality of service norms by not providing adequate PoIs, a contention which has been prima facie accepted by the regulator, which has since ordered compliance.

The already established telcos responded back saying adequate PoIs had already been provided and cited Jio’s under preparedness for the problem.

Notably, the call failure rate is still way higher than the less than half a percent mandated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) which has set October 17 as the deadline for incumbent mobile phone companies to comply with the quality of standards norms.

Bharti Airtel may have provisioned nearly 4,000 E1 links (interconnect points) to Jio so far, one person cited said, but this still needs to be confirmed from either Airtel or Jio.