Jio’s claims on IUC made to malign other operators: Airtel

Bharti Airtel has alleged that Reliance Jio made misleading claims about incumbents benefitting by almost ~1 lakh crore due to non-implementation of the Trai report of 2011.

According to Airtel’s letter to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) Chairman RS Sharma, the facts presented by Jio were grossly incorrect and they seem to have been misrepresented with “the specific purpose of maligning other operators and misleading Trai and the public at large”.

In the letter, Airtel said gross interconnect usage charges (IUC) receipts were considered instead of net IUC receipts and even the gross receipts were on much higher side than what was actually received by Airtel. “Airtel has only received net IUC of ~7,795 crore in the last 5 years. Even at present value, the net IUC received stands at ~9,417 crore. Even if one were to assume the claims made by Jio to be correct, the present value of surplus recovery will be only ~7,443 crore and not ~46,958 crore as claimed by Jio,” it said.

The country’s top mobile operator said there has been significant loss to Airtel, as the termination charges have been well below the cost of 30-35 paisa per minute. “The loss to Airtel on account of below-cost IUC has been to the tune of ~6,800 crore in the last 5 years on present-value basis,” it said.