Idea inter-connection to Jio up by 230%, co says 'inadequate'

Idea Cellular on Friday said it has agreed to provide 230 per cent additional interconnection capacity to help users of Reliance Jio complete calls, a move the Mukesh Ambani-led firm termed as "grossly inadequate" displaying lack of intent to resolve the critical issue.

Days after Jio accused dominant incumbent operators of providing inadequate points of inter-connections (PoIs), Idea today said it will "further enhance capacity in both access and long-distance inter-connection, by providing over 230 per cent additional capacity, allowing for two-way calling between the networks".

Idea said it has now provisioned 1,865 ports for access, from the 565 earlier. Simultaneously, the NLD (national long distance) capacity is also being expanded by nearly 50 per cent.

"With this huge capacity expansion, over 2,100 ports will now be available for traffic between Idea and Jio, allowing sufficient buffer for future," Idea said in a statement. Terming the offer as "disappointing", Reliance Jio said four crore calls fail every day between the Idea network and its own.

"Adequate inter-connection capacity so that call failure rate is less than 5 per 1,000 is a licence obligation of all telecom operators.

As against this, over 750 calls per 1,000 are failing per day between Idea and Jio networks, which translates into 4 crore calls failing per day," Reliance Jiosaid in a statement,