'Never charged customers for unlimited calls' : Airtel's response after Reliance Jio resumes free calls to other networks

Ajai Puri, COO, Bharti Airtel said in a statement, "Airtel, we are obsessed with delivering the best-in-class experience to our customers. Airtel mobile customers already enjoy unlimited free calls to all networks with our prepaid bundles and postpaid plans that also offer large dollops of high speed data.

"In fact, Airtel has never charged its customers separately for IUC and the unlimited calling benefits will continue for our customers without any change.”

On Jan 1, Jio while announcing unlimited free calls to all networks said it was left with no option but to start charging its customers for offnet voice calls, at a rate exactly equivalent to the applicable IUC charge after TRAI on Sep 1, 2019 extended the timeline for implementation of the Bill & Keep regime beyond 1st January 2020.

According to a report issued by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) , Bharati Airtel lost more than 1.2 million subscribers in March 2020. Vodafone Idea, too, reported the biggest erosion in its subscribers with more than 63 lakh customers leaving the network. The collective loss stood at a staggering 75 lakh customers.

During the same period Reliance Jio had added 46 lakh wireless subscribers.