The war among the telecom service provider of India is on and now Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio are fighting over 25 seconds. Let’s check out what’s the mater.
We will now get a shorter miss call as the companies have decided to reduce the ring duration.
Earlier the ringing time was 45 seconds but the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has passed a new rule to reduce it.
Reliance Jio reduced it to 20 seconds for calls coming on its network. This was noticed by the incumbents who protested and complained to the Trai.
Earlier this week, the Airtel and Vodafone reduced the ring duration to 25 seconds from earlier 35-40 seconds. While Airtel has reduced ring duration across its network, Vodafone Idea has done it in some circles only.
Here’s all you need to know about this and more:
According to Airtel the Reliance Jio has reduced its ring duration to manipulate the interconnection usage charge (IUC) regime.So that it can get more return calls to Reliance Jio’s network, enabling the latter to reduce its IUC payouts to incumbent telcos (Airtel and Vodafone-Idea).
In case if you don’t know what is IUC than, IUC is paid by a telecom carrier to the one on whose network a call terminates. This generates revenue for the company on whose network the call ends.
But, the Reliance Jio has rejected the allegation of lowering the call duration. The company claims that 15-20 seconds is a globally followed norm.
Reliance Jio claims that 20 seconds is sufficient for a user to answer a call. It claims longer call duration is a waste of time.
Airtel, Vodafone-Idea, BSNL, and MTNL claim that minimum 30 seconds call duration is in the interest of consumers as well as network performance.
Airtel also claims that Reliance Jio’s reduction has rendered features such as call forwarding and call announcements useless.
The Bharti Airtel was given a warning last month to reduce its ring time unless TRAI made Reliance Jio increase the duration of its own ring time.
According to Airtel at the TRAI meeting held in September, Reliance Jio has most calls terminating on its network and hence change in voice traffic flow. “Before the change, the traffic pattern for Airtel vis-à-vis Jio was 65-35, incoming to outgoing calls,” a company representative told The Economic Times. “But within 48 hours, it changed to 60:40, and if unchecked, this could artificially change the pattern dramatically”.