After the launch of free voice calls for life offer by Reliance Jio, all the incumbent operators Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, and others have approached the telecom regulator regarding the free voice call service of Reliance Jio. As according to these telecom giants all these tariff plans are discriminatory, predatory and non-compliant to present rules. In response to that, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has recently announced that the Reliance Jio’s offer of free voice call and data services plan is not discriminatory and compliant with the existing rules. The telecom regulator of the country said in a letter to all telecom operators that “the tariff plans filed with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India cannot be considered as the IUC (interconnection usage charges) predatory, non-compliant and discriminatory at present. Other incumbent telecom operators had asked the telecom regulator to find out a way to curb this huge asymmetric traffic to make sure that the receiving networks are not used get abused by the free traffic.
As per the interconnection usage charges, every telecom operator has to pay 14 paise per minute for every outgoing call from their network to the telecom operator on whose network it’s going to land. Last month, Reliance Jio Infocomm which is controlled by the Reliance Industries stormed the telecom industry by offering unlimited free voice calls to its subscribers for the lifetime. Moreover, Reliance Jio is offering unlimited 4G free mobile broadband until December 31. In a statement, Reliance Jio said that “The letter sent by TRAI clearly establishes the point that the traffic offered by the Reliance Jio is in compliance with the existing regulations. Reliance Jio has limited the revised offer of free services to 90 days i.e. 3 December 2016 and become consistent with the promotional offers guidelines. Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited wants to reconfirm that the JWO benefits of the unlimited data and free voice call will continue to be available to all the Jio subscribers till 31 December 2016.