Airtel ends VoLTE exclusivity of Jio in Mumbai

Bharti Airtel became the first telecom operator after Reliance Jio to introduce VoLTE (voice over long-term evolution) services for its 4G customers in Mumbai. The company plans to deploy the services across the country in the coming months.

The launch ends Jio’s exclusivity in the VoLTE space. Incumbent telecom operators have been facing the brunt of one-year-old Jio, which disrupted the market last year with free calling and low-cost data on their VoLTE network. Vodafone, Idea and even BSNL are expected to roll out their VoLTE services by mid-2018, which would shrink Jio’s market further. While VoLTE would be an essential service for telcos to survive in the future, Airtel’s launch is not likely to prompt others to speed up their VoLTE launch, analysts said.

“Over the next few months, we will rapidly accelerate the deployment of VoLTE to cover all key geographies to bring HD (high definition) quality calling to our customers,” said Abhay Savargaonkar, network director, Bharti Airtel. VoLTE users will continue to be charged according to their existing plans on the new network, the company said.

Last week, Airtel wrote to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) regarding Jio’s misrepresented claims on interconnection usage charges, which remains another bone of contention between the incumbents and Jio.

Airtel has been trying to counter Jio with new plans costing ~399 and ~349 that offer 1 GB data per day. In the last quarter, Airtel’s net profit plunged 75 per cent, with the annual gross revenue dropping 4.6 per cent sequentially, as it had to reduce tariffs to stay competitive.

“Price points are not the final call for end consumers. Eventually, it will boil down to the kind of experience that the telco is able to provide to them. If they suffer call drops and signal loss, it really won’t make much of a difference,” said Amresh Nandan, research director, Gartner.