Reliance Jio accuses Airtel of hiding ill-gotten profits under current IUC

The war of words between Mukesh Ambani owned Reliance Jio and Airtel is not to going to end soon, as the former once again alleged that the later misrepresented facts purposefully to create a smoke screen and hide its ill-gotten profits under the current interconnect usage charges (IUC).

Jio said, "It is obvious that this misrepresentation of facts and wrong interpretation of data has been carried out purposefully to create a smoke-screen to hide its ill-gotten profits and to support its false pretense of loss under the existing IUC regime."

The IUC rates have been the biggest issue between incumbents telcos and Reliance Jio.

Incumbents have also demanded to increase the IUC rates to 28- 35 paise per minute from the present level of 14 paise a minute.

The statement comes after India's largest telecom operator, Airtel accused Reliance Jio of "misleading" the telecom regulator TRAI over the IUC and claimed that the company suffered a loss of Rs. 6,800 crore in the last five years due to low mobile call connection charges fixed by the regulator.

Meanwhile, to counter Reliance Jio, Airtel has announced the launch of its Voice over LTE (VoLTE) services in Mumbai. Airtel VoLTE, which works over 4G, will offer customers HD quality voice calls along with faster call set up time.

Airtel VoLTE will be available on popular 4G/LTE enabled mobile devices, which must have an Airtel 4G SIM. Customers can call any mobile, landline network using Airtel VoLTE. There will be no additional data charges for VoLTE and calls will be billed as per existing plan or packs benefits.

Even in the case of non-availability of 4G, Airtel VoLTE calls will automatically fall back on a 3G/2G network to ensure that customers continue to stay connected at all times. Airtel VoLTE will also allow customers to continue with their data sessions at 4G speeds while the call is in progress.