Why Airtel-Jio spat over ringer time misses more than a beat

New Delhi: The hyper-competitive Indian telecom sector has seen many battles as operators compete for revenue and subscribers but the latest round of war between telcos is over how long should your mobile phone ring with Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio yet again crossing swords.

Last week, Airtel, the country’s second-ranked operator by revenue, shot off a letter to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, saying that it has cut the ringing time for outgoing calls on a rival network to 25 seconds from 45.

This was a tit-for-tat move after its bitter rival Jio did the same. Airtel said it had to take this step as despite its repeated requests, Trai had neither directed Jio to restore the timer to its original duration of 45 seconds nor issued a direction to operators to set the timer to 30 seconds as proposed by most operators.