The ongoing tussle between Reliance Jio 's and other telcos is likely to continue for another three months until the new entrant's free service period ends on 31 December.
Playing spoilsport for the RJIO ultra cheap 4G offer are the existing market players. Telcos including Bharti Airtel, Idea and Vodafone India are locking horns with RIL.
This means, Reliance Jio users are likely to experience call drops and network congestion while connecting to other network phone users.
Rajan Mathews, DG Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), has said that Reliance has to launch Jio commercially before other telecos start forwarding calls which is crucial for smooth operation.
"Till now there is no commercial launch, first RIL will have to rollout their service on the commercial space for other telecos to carry forward their calls. Till now they are not operating in the commercial space. Their service is still free till December", Mathews said.
RIL CMD Mukesh Ambani had raised the issue at the company's AGM on Wednesday.
He told shareholders how RJIO customers suffered 5 crore call failures to other networks due to insufficient interconnect capacity.
"Operators should fulfil their obligation to provide interconnectivity without delay so that no JIO customer suffers", Ambani said.
But telcos who are reeling under competitive pricing of RJIO are complaining of further losses due to RJIO additional customer load.
"Actually, what members are saying is that it really takes 30 paise to carry that call and deliver it on our network. So even in this instance, you are at best paying 14 paise. So in a sense, for every call that is coming, we (other telcos) are subsidising it by 15 paise as per TRAI rules. So there is a real financial impact on all the operators which needs to be recognised," Mathews added.
With the telcos vs RJIO faceoff set to continue for at least 3 more months, experts believe that consumers should wait and watch.
"RIL should rollout family packs so that calls can be made from one Reliance Phone to another, till then there will be issues. There could be some foul play with telecos blaming technical errors and not completing calls from RJIO phones", explains telecom expert Ravi VS Prasad.
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