Telco war: Mittal meets Trai chief over inter-connect row

Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal on Wednesday met Trai Chairman R S Sharma to explain his side of story on the ongoing war of words with new entrant Reliance Jio over providing network connectivity. While Jio continues to accuse dominant incumbent operators, including Airtel, of providing far less than adequate points of interconnections (PoIs) needed for its users to complete a call to a rival network, Mittal said his company is providing interconnectivity ports and is on the cusp of augmenting the capacity further, reports PTI. "PoIs are being opened at a fast pace... About 2,100 points of inter-connect (PoIs) have already been given and demand note for another 1,000 PoIs has gone out yesterday so the process is going on...," he said after the meeting. "The PoIs which we have given and those that are being given and will be commissioned over few days, can serve 2532 million customers."

Mittal, who heads India's largest mobile company by subscriber base, expressed hope that the issue will get sorted out over the next few days or weeks.

"There are testing processes, demand notes are sent, payments are made... things are going on," he explained. While Mittal declined to comment on the details of his meeting with Sharma, sources told PTI that the Bharti chief has communicated that it is not company's intent to fight competition through inter-connectivity issue, but in the market.

The company is also learnt to have informed the regulator that it will ensure no congestion occurs at the inter-connectivity points. The company, the sources said, has also communicated its willingness to augment capacity at the Po Is. Inter-connection enables mobile users to make calls to customers of other telecom networks and is, therefore, crucial for smooth functioning of mobile service.