Reliance Jio has accused Airtel, Vodafone Idea and BSNL of masquerading wireline numbers as mobile numbers. Jio has alleged that the incumbent operators are doing this to get higher interconnect usage charges.
Every time a Jio user calls a mobile subscriber on another operator’s network, Jio has to pay interconnect fee to that operator. Jio has alleged that by showing a wireline number as mobile connection, the incumbent operators are taking a higher termination charge.
“The incumbent operators have implemented a process, under which various enterprises are offered mobile numbers as their customer care/helpline numbers. Some of the popular examples are like 8888888888 by Just Dial, 9313931393 by Oyo, 9115691156 by Videocon D2H etc. In all these cases, the mobile number is used just as a virtual number for routing all such calls to respective call centre set-ups of these organisations operating on wire-line PRIs with hunting facilities.”Jio said in a letter to the TRAI.
Thus, even when the calling party is dialling the mobile number, all such calls are actually terminating on the fixed lines without ever touching the radio access network of the terminating operator. Thus, the underlying wireline numbers are being deliberately and fraudulently masqueraded with the published mobile numbers by the incumbent operators,” it added.
Jio alleged that this implementation is in gross violation of the Interconnection Usage Charges (IUC) Regulations 2003 issued by TRAI and as amended from time to time, which prescribes separate termination charges for calls terminating on wireless and wireline numbers and the current prevailing per minute termination charges are 6 paise and 0 paise respectively. Hence, this implementation of masquerading the wireline number with mobile numbers is a case of deliberate and fraudulent attempt made by incumbent operators to illegally extract mobile termination charge of 6 paise/minute from originating operator, whereas in reality the call is getting terminated on wireline network.
Jio allegations come after Airtel's claimed that Jio was disconnecting calls after a short ring duration to game the IUC system.