COAI plays down Reliance Jio warning of legal action

By Nandita Singh

A very clear picture of losing significant business to the new telecom and digital services entrant Reliance Jio is giving ‘big boys of India telecom’ the heebie-jeebies, resulting into skirmishes the industry and consumers can do without.

Earlier this week, Reliance Jio warned of legal action against COAI for playing in the hands of incumbent telcos in India market and for unfair actions to block RJio market debut.

COAI, it is said, at the behest of top telcos – Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone India – has accused RJio of running a full-service in the garb of beta testing of services, bypassing regulations and resulting in revenue loss for the government and other telcos. This came in response to RJio pointing out that incumbent operators are not providing enough interconnect points to test services. The matter was reported to prime minister’s office from where both parties did not receive any intervention.

While consumers are awaiting a full service launch of RJio services, the company has recently opened its preview offer to enterprise level testing with an offering of unlimited data, voice services to HP users via its JioFi. To avail this, HP users can log on to jio.com/preview/hp to register their devices by entering details like name, email ID, mobile number, city and state and the HP serial number.

On the consumer side the company has been widening the handsets base on which RJio 90-day preview offer is available. Initially, RJio preview offer was available only to employees and their families on the company’s LYF branded handsets. Now, it is available on 4G smartphones of Samsung, LG, Micromax, TCL and Alcatel as well -- for all consumers. Under this offer all that a customer needs to do is submit their KYC documents at the time of purchase of their device to avail of the Jio SIM. As part of the offer, for 90 days from the activation of the Jio SIM, users get unlimited HD voice calls and video calls, unlimited SMS, unlimited High-Speed Data and a host of Jio premium apps such as JioPlay, JioOnDemand, JioBeats, JioMags, JioXpressNews, JioDrive, JioSecurity, and JioMoney.

Meanwhile, a number of Facebook users who have previewed RJio services are not too happy with voice services on 4G and are making it known in their comments. Consumers in India continue to face QoS (quality of service) issue, primary reason being under-investment in telecom infrastructure for the 1.2 billion-user market, which now from the demand side is poised for a multiplier-IoT adoption at the consumer level with smartphone at the center of it all.

In fact, in the third quarter of CY 2016, quarterly shipments of mobile handsets including both smart phones and feature phones crossed 75 million for the first time in India, according to a devices quarterly tracker report released this week by Cyber Media Research, a research agency better known as CMR.

And according to Voice&Data India Telecom Industry Survey 2016, released in August 2016, even though the mobile phones have had a flat growth in last fiscal there has been a re-ordering of the players and the active price bands, showcasing high activity.  You can pick up a digital issue of the monthly Voice&Data magazine from any of the e-magstands  or subscribe here to read the findings of the 21^st Annual India Telecom Industry Survey.

Below you can read the full text of RJio’s communication to COAI, warning of legal action, which is now being publicly dismissed by COAI Director General Rajan Mathews. The RJio communication was sent to COAI with a copy to Arun Jaitley, Manoj Sinha, Nripendra Mishra, JS Deepak and RS Sharma. Sent on August 22, it was addressed to Rajan Mathews, the Director General of COAI and signed by RJio authorized signatory Kapoor Singh Guliani.

********************************************************************************************************************

Dear Sh Rajan Mathews,

At the outset, please take on record Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited’s (“Reliance Jio”) protest against the gross and serious acts of breach of trust, fraudulent conduct, and gross misrepresentation of facts with wilful and deliberate intent to malign and damage the interests of Reliance Jio. Reliance Jio reserves all its rights to take any or all available legal recourse against COAI, including anyone who were parties to such acts, in their individual or other capacities,” said RJIL in its letter to COAI.

Your mail captioned “Letter to be sent to Govt. on RIL Jio "Test Service” together with the attachments sent by you at 3:05 pm on August 22, 2016, states that “COAI expects to send to the respective government officials in the continuing matter of RIL Jios test program”, whereas it is evident that the said attachments were already submitted to the government officials as early as 12 50 pm, on August 22, 2016,” it said.

Your email therefore is a blatant lie and a fraudulent act, inasmuch as Reliance Jio is being reached out to post facto, making it appear that the said attachments were actually not sent, as at the time of sending your email. Prior to your email, Reliance Jio was not contacted in any manner whatsoever, as regards the intent or the contents of your attached letters to receive its views or comments,” said RJIL.   

In any event, Reliance Jio being a core member of COAI ought to have been consulted and its comments and views duly considered as part of any representation that COAI intends to send to any government officials. Please refer to our letters No. RJIL/COAI/2016-17/412 dated August 12, 2016 and RJIL/COAI/2016-17/441 dated August 17, 2016 through which Reliance Jio had categorically brought to your notice that COAI cannot unilaterally decide on sending out any such representations without following due process. COAI’s act of sending the subject letters is yet another instance of abuse of process, which apart from being unethical also tantamount to breach of trust and gross violation of COAI’s stated process in this regard,” it added,   

It flows from the above that COAI is deliberately and maliciously acting at the behest of and as a mouthpiece for certain specific incumbent dominant operators, having vested interest against Reliance Jio. It only evidences further COAI is openly promoting cartelisation in the guise of promoting the cause of the industry, while actually perpetrating anti competition practices and misguiding and misinforming the Government, Statutory Authorities and the consumers. You’re already aware that the incumbent dominant operators are themselves wilfully and deliberately in violation of the license conditions by restricting interconnection augmentation, MNP etc.

Be that as it may, the contents of the attachment are devoid of any merits and contains deliberate misstatements constituting misrepresentation of actual facts and are defamatory in nature.

Please be warned that COAI shall refrain from continuing the perpetration of above acts of misdeeds forthwith.

Best Regards,

For Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited

Kapoor Singh Guliani

Authorized Signatory

*******************************************************************************************************************

(Inputs by Sanjeeb Kumar Sahoo)