Idea says not violated norms in issuing PoI to Jio

Idea, India’s 3^rd largest telco, on Tuesday said that it hadn’t violated any norms in issuing PoIs - points of interconnection to rival Reliance Jio for which the telecom regulator has proposed a penalty of Rs.950 cr. TRAI - Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Friday recommended penal action against the nation’s top 3 telcos, to the extent of Rs.50 cr per circle, for deliberately blocking calls made from Reliance Jio’s network. The total penalty proposed to be levied on Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea is Rs.3,050 cr.

The company management in a post-earnings call with investors said that Idea had released at least twenty times the PoIs in the last 1 month as it did before Reliance Jio launched services in early September.

Meanwhile, Idea share price was trading at Rs.79.15, up 5.11 per cent on the NSE today.

Himanshu Kapania, managing director (MD) of Idea, said in the call that there was no confusion in their mind that PoIs needed to be given to all operators and they had gone out of their way for Jio. He added that Idea was not violating any QoS or quality of service norms. They had responded to the show-cause notice and they had a complete legal opinion of no violation, he said.

In the conference call, the company management also said that while there had been no impact on the voice revenue front on account of Jio’s entry, data revenues had taken a hit. The company said that it had risen capex guidance by almost 4 times to Rs.8,000 cr for the fiscal year ending 31^st March 2017 as it is actively expanding 3G and 4G coverage.

Idea spent a total of Rs.2,000 cr towards capital expenditure in the second quarter(Q2) of current financial year. Kapania said that the capex should decline by next year and sharply fall in subsequent years.