Bharti Airtel has alleged that Reliance Jio (RJio) has made false representations and tried to spread misinformation regarding the interconnect usage charges (IUC).
In a letter to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Tuesday, Airtel said RJio has ‘again tried to spread misinformation’ by distorting facts for the third time in the last two months with an aim to mislead the Authority.
“This is with reference to our earlier letter dated September 6, 2017 and various media reports wherein RJio has alleged that Airtel has made false representation against RJio’s submission on IUC payments received by incumbents,” Airtel said in the letter to TRAI.
The war of letters comes even as TRAI is set to give its final ruling on the new IUC charges. While Airtel wants the rates to be kept at current levels, RJio has pushed for a drastic reduction.
IUC are fee paid by the operator on whose network the call originates to the operator on whose network the call ends. Under the existing market scenario, RJio is a net payer of the charges to incumbent operators.
The latest letter comes after a day of RJio writing to TRAI, alleging that claims by Bharti Airtel on gains made on IUC were misplaced and devoid of any fact and logic.
However, Airtel said that RJio in the mentioned letter has once again misrepresented the facts by its wrong calculations that not only include the gross minutes of usages (MoUs) instead of net MoUs, but also the on-net incoming MoUs in their calculation for the IUC.
“We are amused to see that Reliance Jio has deliberately ignored the fact that IUC is an inter-operator settlement and no operator pays IUC for the on-net calls, as these are intra-network calls,” the Airtel letter to TRAI said.
An elementary errorIt said that RJio has deliberately made this elementary error and mischievously used a completely flawed methodology just to justify the inflated numbers with a view to change perception.
Airtel alleged that RJio has been propagating these misleading numbers since TRAI’s IUC workshop held on July 18, and are now struggling to justify those inflated figures.
“In addition, we would also like to emphasise that RJio has been completely non-transparent, and has not shared its IUC model with all stakeholders till now. And yet, they continue to exaggerate and distort figures for TSPs like us who have transparently shared the costing models,” it said.
“Their whole objective is to bring down the IUC through the misinformation campaign, with RJio being the sole beneficiary of the lower IUC.
“This is precisely the reason why we have been urging TRAI to share the costing model so that such false claims can be uncovered,” Airtel added.
Airtel also pointed out that it has not made any gains on account of IUC and in fact, the loss to Airtel on account of below cost IUC has been to the tune of ₹6,800 crore in the last five years on present value basis.