Telecom operator Bharti Airtel has decided to approach the government and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India against the penalty of over Rs 1,000 crore imposed on the company for not providing interconnection facility to Reliance Jio, PTI reported. "We believe there is confusion here. We are very confident that government will take a very objective position in the Herculean efforts we have put to resolve this issue," Bharti Airtel MD and CEO for India and South Asia Gopal Vittal said on Wednesday.
The penalty was recommended by Trai after Reliance Jio complained that they faced high call failures on their network because the existing operators were not providing interconnection facility. Besides Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular were also found liable to pay a total penalty of Rs 3,050 crore. Reliance Jio was launched on September 1. Vittal said, "It is part of our regulatory obligation that we provide connect. At the end of the day it is our job to fight in the market and serve customers better. So this is a non-issue."
He said the company has done a lot of augmentation on points of interconnect. According to him, the interconnection ports that the company has provided for every million customers was 2.5 times more than that provided by any other operator in the country. "The regulation allows you 90 days to all these augmentation. We have done it literally in 5 weeks," he said.
Vittal said it was difficult for Airtel to offer free 4G services to counter Reliance Jio’s offer at the moment, but the company was considering other options such as more bundled services. "We believe that when something is free there is only way to compete is to go and give it for free. It is very difficult. In that sense we are watching that space," he said, adding that free services had impact on the quality of network.
The company admitted that its growth had been affected by the launch of Reliance Jio, and said it planned to introduce more competitive 4G service packages. On Wednesday, Airtel posted 4.9% drop in net profit for the September quarter, citing hike in interest costs and devaluation of Nigerian currency.
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