Reliance Jio says 0.6-1.1 million customers added everyday; blames competitors for call failures

Charging incumbent operators of "anti-competitive behaviour", Reliance Jio Infocomm on Thursday said over 75 % of calls on its network are still failing due to insufficient interconnection facility provided by other operators. "The customers of India have continued to face severe quality of service issues owing to inadequate release of points of interconnection by the incumbent mobile operators to Jio. Call failure rates continue to be severe with over 75 calls failing out of every 100 call attempts on the networks of some of the operators," Reliance Industries said in a statement. "Indian public have not been able to enjoy Jio's free voice offer as a result of such anticompetitive behaviour of incumbent operators in breach of license conditions," the statement said. 

The company is offering free phone call and 4G mobile broadband service till December 31. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had set a deadline of October 17, 2016 to mobile operators to resolve the matter so that customers do not experience poor quality of service. Trai has observed high level of congestion in telecom networks leading to call failure on Reliance Jio's network. "This is in breach of Quality of Service regulation that not more than 5 calls out of every 1,000 call attempts can fail. While Jio has rolled out a state-of-the-art network, the benefits of superior voice technology have been denied to public at large due to the POI congestion," RJio said. 

Jio has been alleging that Airtel, Vodafone and Idea are denying it required number of interconnection points. However, the incumbents have said that they have provided sufficient points of interconnection (PoIs) to meet requirement of Jio as per industry average. In the letter dated October 12, marked to Telecom Secretary and Trai Chairman, Jio alleged average call drop experienced by its customer as on October 8 was as high as 87 % on Vodafone and 67 % on Idea network for NLD service. The company has sought interconnection facility for supporting 100 million mobile subscribers by March 2017. Jio has achieved this growth faster than any other telecom operator or start up in the world including the likes of Facebook, WhatsApp and Skype, it added. "Jio has created a world record by crossing 16 million subscribers in its first month of operations (September 2016)," the statement said.

Despite the rampant call drops issue it is facing since launch, Reliance Jio  said it is adding anywhere between 0.6 million and 1.1 million customers a day and maintained it will be investing Rs 1 trillion more in operations by 2020. The telecom arm of RIL commercially launched mobile services on September 12, and within a month, it had claimed to have created history by adding 16 million customers. The Mukesh Ambani-led firm, which invested Rs 1.45 trillion in setting up the business, is targeting 100 million customers within a year of commercial launch. "We are adding a low of 0.6 million and a high of 1.1 million customers a day,"

Reliance Jio business head Anshuman Thakur told reporters in New Delhi while announcing the second quarter earnings of the parent Reliance Industries in New Delhi on Thursday evening. But he declined to put an absolute number of customers as of Thursday and also refused to reconfirm whether the company is on course to achieve the 100 million customer mark by the end of the first year of commercial operations. Since its launch Jio customers have been complaining of call drops as the company has not been able to secure sufficient number of points of interconnect with existing players.

Reliance Group Chief Financial Officer V Srikanth clarified the Rs 2.5 trillion investment into the telecom venture that Chairman Mukesh Ambani had spoken about earlier this week pertains to the additional capex of Rs 1 trillion expected through 2020. "We have already invested Rs 1.45 trillion into Jio at the launch. What the Chairman was referring to was the additional capex of Rs 1 trillion expected over the next four years to 2020 when we will have to invest more into expanding the fibre connectivity to individual homes and other network expansion related expenses," Srikanth said. On the retail business, Srikanth said, of the total revenue of Rs 8,079 crore in the September quarter, which was up 63 % from the comparative period last fiscal year, the telecom handset revenue contributed around Rs 1,300 crore and the petroleum retail revenue came in at Rs 1,200 crore. Despite a massive rise in revenue, the company's margins declined to 2 %, while pretax profit rose to Rs 162 crore, up 42.1 %. Asked about regulator Trai directing Jio to end the free services by December 3, Thakur said the order pertains to the new connections and not to the existing customers who can enjoy the free services till December 31, and is as per the licence agreement.