Airtel says Jio’s allegations ‘baseless’, condemns tower damage

New Delhi: Telecom major Bharti Airtel has said that Reliance Jio’s allegations claiming sabotage of the latter’s tower infrastructure by its rivals are baseless and outrageous.

In a letter to Anshu Prakash, Secretary of Department of Telecommunications, Airtel also condemned the disruption of telecom networks and the instances of vandalism.

“We have always advocated firm government action to ensure 100 per cent continuity of networks. We would in fact go so far as to say that the department must bring forward a policy to mandate ICR in such situations of vandalism and network outages as a matter of course so that customers are never inconvenienced,” it said.

“The baseless allegation made by Jio that Airtel is behind the farmer agitation to ‘sabotage’ their network and to force customers to switch to Airtel is therefore simply outrageous,” the letter added.

It also said that Jio’s annexure to the complaint did not demonstrate any evidence that Airtel has hand in the ongoing issues faced by Jio.

“The irony of the situation is that while the operating teams were having several conversations over the last few days on how to provide support to the Jio teams based on their request, Jio was actually spending time drafting frivolous letters and making scurrilous allegations,” the letter said.

The response from Airtel comes after Reliance Jio Infocomm in a letter dated December 28, 2020 said that there are “blatant efforts” to sabotage its network in the garb of farmers’ protest by the channel partners of Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea.

In letters sent to DoT Secretary Prakash and P.D. Vaghela, Chairman, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Jio said that a grave situation has emerged in Punjab and Haryana amid the ongoing farmers’ protest.

“As a result of false and frivolous communication that Reliance will be an undue beneficiary of the farm bills passed by Parliament, Jio’s telecommunications network is being targeted by the protesters and the same is being disrupted and permanently damaged,” Reliance Jio said.

IANS

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