Reliance Jio number portability issues: Airtel, Vodafone, Idea rejecting MNP requests, Jio tells TRAI

Reliance Jio may have the best 4G network with offers like no other carrier, but it is suffering at the hands of rivals as they are allegedly refusing to help the carrier with necessary points of interconnect (PoI) and mobile number portability (MNP) requests. Reliance Industries Limited Chairman Mukesh Ambani-led startup voiced its concern in a letter to TRAI Chairman RS Sharma.

The letter says that Vodafone, Airtel and Idea are baselessly refusing to enable MNP for their existing customers.

"Considering that this is a clear and deliberate breach of the license conditions, TRAI must direct incumbent dominant operators to comply with their license terms and obligations ... failing which it should recommend cancellation of the respective licenses at the earliest," Reliance Jio wrote in its letter to TRAI.

Reliance Jio said it has been certified as MNP compliant by the Telecom Enforcement, Resource and Monitoring (TERM) Cells, but the incumbent carriers have rejected all porting out requests between Sept. 9 and 12. The letter, dated Sept. 14, noted that such a practice disregards the terms and conditions of Telecommunication Mobile Number Portability Regulations, 2009 and TRAI directions, PTI reported.

If we recall, Reliance had asked its employees to port their existing numbers to Jio's network last month. But 4,919 MNP requests for corporate mobile numbers issued to employees and members of Reliance Industries by Airtel were rejected.

"Almost all of these rejections have been made on the baseless and unsubstantiated ground of violation of contractual obligation. The incumbent dominant operators have not even bothered to elaborate the contractual obligations that have been violated," Reliance Jio said. Airtel, Vodafone and Idea are yet to comment on the matter.

Without portability, users of current network carriers will not be able to switch to Reliance Jio by keeping their existing numbers. But that's not the only issue that Reliance Jio is currently facing. The voice calls coverage is currently dreadful and users are complaining of failed calls to rival networks.

According to Reliance Jio, 80 out of every 100 call attempts made to Vodafone numbers is failing and more than 15 crore Reliance Jio calls have failed on Vodafone's network in the last 10 days. The situation has been same on Airtel's network as well, recording more than 75 failed calls out of every 100 call attempts.

TRAI regulation on quality of service mandates that PoI congestion should not affect more than 1 call in every 200 calls made. These carriers have released PoIs to improve the quality of the call coverage, but Reliance Jio fears that it is not suffice to maintain a reliable network.