Updated at September 27, 2016:
The Indian telecom watchdog Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has stepped in to resolve the issue between Jio and other telcos.
The regulator has asked for an explanation from incumbent telecom operators for the high percentage of call drops experienced by Reliance Jio.
“Prima facie this constitutes to non-compliance of licence conditions related to interconnection and QoS (quality of service) norms on congestion levels at points of interconnection. Looking at the data, the call failure figures are really unacceptable as against 0.5 percent quality of service standards,” commented RS Sharma, Chairman, TRAI.
Our original story from Tuesday, February 6, 2018, follows:
Do you have a Jio connection, but not able to make calls to your friends and family who are using another telecom operators connection? well, you are not alone. Reliance Jio is facing a tough situation with incumbent telcos, mainly Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular over the interconnection points (POIs).
Reliance Jio claims that India’s top telcos are not providing the sufficient point of interconnection for its customers. The result, Jio subscribers are not able to make voice calls to other networks and massive call failures between Jio and other networks. So, now Reliance Jio has taken the fight to a new level. The operator has put up live data on call drops its users are facing due to the interconnectivity issue with the incumbent operators.
Those who don’t know Point of Interconnections or Interconnection points (POIs) is used by telecom operators, which allow a user to make calls from one telecom operator to another operator. If one telecom operator doesn’t provide enough POIs then it will result in call failure.
The Reliance Jio live call drop data [link] shows the call failure experienced by its users during a 24-hour duration and this data been updated periodically. Revealing the call drop data for 22nd September 2016, the company says over 12 crore calls out of 15 crore call attempts by its subscribers failed.
Breaking down the data, call failure on Vodafone India network seems to be the highest clocking at 84.1 percent. With 3.95 crores out of 4.69, crore calls from Jio users to Vodafone network failing.
Second on the list being Airtel with a call drop of 78.4 percent, where Jio users made 6.13 crore call attempts to Airtel network and 4.8 crores out of them failed. While, call failure on Idea Cellular network clocked at 3.36 crore failed call attempts out of 4.39 crore calls.
Jio further breaks down the call failure data explaining that in peak hours or during busy hours the call failures are too high. 81.5 percent out of 0.43 crore calls made to Airtel network during peak hours failed to connect. While 87.8 percent out of 0.26 crore calls to Vodafone dropped and 82.2 percent out of 0.28 crore calls made to Idea network failed during busy hours.
- Over 12 crore calls fail in 15 crore call attempt from Jio to other operators network.
- Call failure to Vodafone network clocking the highest with 84.1 percent.
- During peak hours call drops get worse with more than 81 percent calls getting dropped.
So, it seems you better not to make voice calls from Jio to outside/other telecom operators during the peak hours.
Reliance Jio entered the Indian telecom market on 5th September 2016 and from that day battling with incumbent telecom players over the interconnect issue. The main cause of this was Reliance Jio’s free unlimited voice call offer and the unlimited Jio Welcome Offer for new users till 31st December 2016.
Due to the free voice call offer, incumbent telecom operators accuses Jio of unleashing a ‘tsunami’ of free traffic on to their networks.