ET NowMukesh Ambani has today announced the extension of Reliance Jio free voice, data and other offers till March 31. Rajan Mathews, DG, COAI talked with ET Now and deliberated on its stand on the development. Edited excerpts:
What were your key takeaways from Mukesh Ambani’s speech today?
So first of all, Reliance Jio is a very valued member of COAI and so we wish them all of best of luck and success in the market place. As a general policy, we do not make comment about individual retail plans. We allow the market place and the consumer to determine that. If there are any regulatory issues, I am sure members will address that directly with TRAI and it is up to the regulator to determine, but clearly, they will pitch this as good for the consumer and the consumer will decide what is best.
Now there is a fresh offer that has come in from Reliance Jio. Is this on expected lines or is this worry you given the fact that this much amount of freebies is being offered by a very large entrant and that could really disrupt and impact the overall landscape of the sector?
I believe again market place, the operators have calibrated their own plans to respond to Reliance Jio and again I think from an association perspective, we would leave that to the market place to determine the winners and losers as long as there is no impairment from a policy or a regulatory perspective. That is the only time we raise those issues on an industry wise basis. On a particular member or company basis, we allow the market place to determine what take place and the focus of the retail plan.
In the past, incumbents have spoken at various venues and talked about how anti-competitive this is in nature given the fact that Reliance Jio is offering free voice, free data and now not just for three months it has extended it by another three months. So are you worried that this is anti-competitive in nature?
So a day or two ago, a particular individual has taken all of the member companies including COAI to the competition commission alleging that there were cartelisation and anti-competitive behaviour. So again since it is under consideration in that forum I am afraid I will have to be limited in terms of my response to that question.
Mukesh Ambani did say that as far as the network congestion issue is concerned, incumbents did block Reliance Jio’s entry and they indulge in anti-competitive activities. Is that something that you think is going to now only increase going forward because there is a fresh offer that has come in. Is this issue of network congestion not going to die down between the incumbents and Rel Jio?
TRAI is monitoring the situation very carefully. I understand that they have been meeting regularly with the member companies and that they have been making observations and they have been trying to ensure that there is fair play between all of the member operators. On a historic basis, they did make some recommendations to the DOT, we know that the DoT has set up a panel to look into this so both the DoT as licenser and the TRAI as regulator, has put in place the appropriate mechanism to ensure that there is no unlevel playing field and everybody is playing by the rules. So we are going to have to leave it in those two very confident hands to determine what if any anti-competitive behaviour may emerge.
What were your key takeaways from Mukesh Ambani’s speech today?
So first of all, Reliance Jio is a very valued member of COAI and so we wish them all of best of luck and success in the market place. As a general policy, we do not make comment about individual retail plans. We allow the market place and the consumer to determine that. If there are any regulatory issues, I am sure members will address that directly with TRAI and it is up to the regulator to determine, but clearly, they will pitch this as good for the consumer and the consumer will decide what is best.
Now there is a fresh offer that has come in from Reliance Jio. Is this on expected lines or is this worry you given the fact that this much amount of freebies is being offered by a very large entrant and that could really disrupt and impact the overall landscape of the sector?
I believe again market place, the operators have calibrated their own plans to respond to Reliance Jio and again I think from an association perspective, we would leave that to the market place to determine the winners and losers as long as there is no impairment from a policy or a regulatory perspective. That is the only time we raise those issues on an industry wise basis. On a particular member or company basis, we allow the market place to determine what take place and the focus of the retail plan.
In the past, incumbents have spoken at various venues and talked about how anti-competitive this is in nature given the fact that Reliance Jio is offering free voice, free data and now not just for three months it has extended it by another three months. So are you worried that this is anti-competitive in nature?
So a day or two ago, a particular individual has taken all of the member companies including COAI to the competition commission alleging that there were cartelisation and anti-competitive behaviour. So again since it is under consideration in that forum I am afraid I will have to be limited in terms of my response to that question.
Mukesh Ambani did say that as far as the network congestion issue is concerned, incumbents did block Reliance Jio’s entry and they indulge in anti-competitive activities. Is that something that you think is going to now only increase going forward because there is a fresh offer that has come in. Is this issue of network congestion not going to die down between the incumbents and Rel Jio?
TRAI is monitoring the situation very carefully. I understand that they have been meeting regularly with the member companies and that they have been making observations and they have been trying to ensure that there is fair play between all of the member operators. On a historic basis, they did make some recommendations to the DOT, we know that the DoT has set up a panel to look into this so both the DoT as licenser and the TRAI as regulator, has put in place the appropriate mechanism to ensure that there is no unlevel playing field and everybody is playing by the rules. So we are going to have to leave it in those two very confident hands to determine what if any anti-competitive behaviour may emerge.
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