Airtel and Reliance Jio are now fighting over how long your phones should ring

In a letter to TRAI, Airtel has alleged that Jio is gaming interconnect usage system by reducing call ringing time to 20 seconds.

Money Telecom

There is now a new dispute between Airtel and Reliance Jio with Airtel writing to the regulator TRAI that Jio is cutting calls originating from its network and terminating in other networks after just 20 seconds of ringer time, as per an Economic Times report. Airtel’s contention is that Jio is doing it deliberately so that the person called will return the call and will show the Jio network recording more inward calls. Airtel has said that it will also bring down the ringer time to 20 second unilaterally. This will only inconvenience the customers; Airtel has pointed out to the regulator.

Airtel’s communication to TRAI dated September 3 has also pointed out the features like call forwarding and other call announcements non-functional. Airtel has requested TRAI to direct Jio to increase the ringer time to 30 seconds as is the standard.

The direct benefit that Jio gets is that for calls originating from other networks and terminating on its network it is able to raise the interconnect usage charge.

Jio has a completely different take on this issue. The operator says they are allowing free voice calls on its network and users on the other networks like Airtel and Vodafone who are still on the legacy 2G and 3G where their calls are charged high by the operators leave missed calls on Jio. The Jio users would then return the calls which is free of cost for them. Jio claims this way, it is subsidizing the costs for the other networks.

TRAI appears to have called a meeting of the operators in the first week of September itself to discuss the issue. Those ranged on one side included Airtel, Vodafone, Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL) and Jio on the other. All four incumbents insisted that TRAI fix a minimum 30-second format for ringing for all operators. Their argument was that certain voice call parameters, and traffic flow patterns were getting affected below this timeframe. Airtel is reported to have presented the statistics to show how immediately after Reliance Jio changed the ringer time to 20 seconds, the traffic pattern for Airtel vis-à-vis Jio altered within 48 hours from 65%:35% incoming to outgoing calls to 60%:40%.

Jio’s representative was trying to plead for a 25-second limit as per the report on this meeting, maintaining that the 4 or 5 rings during the 20 second period was sufficient for the person called to pick up the call. Jio also quoted figures from other countries like Australia and the UK, where the ringer time is as less as 15 seconds.