Bharti Airtel to augment point of interconnect to Reliance Jio

Bharti Airtel is planning to augment point of interconnect (PoI) to Reliance Jio as per bilateral agreement.

In a statement, Bharti Airtel said, "In the interim, we continue with our efforts to augment the hundreds of PoIs already given to Reliance Jio, as per the bilateral agreement, so that customers are not inconvenienced."

As a responsible company, Bharti Airtel has always provided PoI to other operators and is fully compliant with all regulatory guidelines and licence conditions. None of the new operators, who have launched services in the last few years, have faced any PoI related issues with Airtel.

Today TRAI had a constructive dialogue on matter related to providing PoIs to Reliance Jio.

Bharti has requested the TRAI to also engage on the subject of a fair IUC regime and ensure that the practice of pricing is in compliance with the 30th Amendment of the Telecom Tariff Order dated January 16, 2004, which envisages tariffs to be IUC compliant, non-predatory and non-discriminatory.

Following the commercial charging of services by Reliance Jio, which is expected by Jan 1, 2017, the traffic will inevitably get to a more balanced level and PoIs will be less of an issue says Bharti Airtel statement.

Bharti has also urged TRAI to find a way to curb the massive asymmetric traffic to ensure that receiving networks are not abused by tsunami of free traffic.