Reliance Jio call connectivity to Airtel, Vodafone, Idea is getting better, but is it good enough?

Reliance Jio users are well aware of the challenges faced while connecting to inter-circle numbers of Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and others. But internal sources have revealed that interconnections have improved over the last couple of days.

According to a report by Economic Times on Thursday, sources revealed that Jio and Airtel connections have witnessed highest amount of improvement with the provisioning of additional interconnect points by the number 1 telco. The current percentage of failed calls every day between Jio and Airtel networks stand at 56 percent, which was nearly 73 percent as on September 23.

One of the sources also explained that daily call failures between Jio and Idea have slightly improved from 75 percent to 62 percent. But the interconnection between Jio and Vodafone is stagnant at 75 percent during the review period. However, the daily call failures between Vodafone and Jio were recorded earlier at 83.5 percent, which means a fraction of the expected improvement.

It is worth noting that the statistics show the rate of call failures, which is different from call drops. The former means the call fails to connect at all, whereas the latter is a reference to when a call fails after it has been connected.

If we take these numbers into TRAI's perspective, there is a lot of work to be done. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, call failure rate must not exceed 0.5 percent. The telecom authority has marked October 17 as the deadline for the operators to fix the quality standards, according to ET.

Jio and the incumbent telecom operators have been embroiled into bitter spats over the last couple of weeks. Last month, Jio accused Airtel, Vodafone and Idea for their lack of response towards releasing necessary interconnect points. The new telco said that this had resulted in over 10 crore failed calls every day between RJIL and the three networks.

In response to those allegations, Airtel said that Jio's under-preparedness and sizeable customer acquisitions before the commercial launch is the main cause of the problem.

It remains to be seen whether the telecom operators will abide by TRAI's mandate and improve the quality of service by the set date.