Jio opposes regulatory intervention on call ring time; backs forbearance

New Delhi: Amid an industry feud over call ringing time, Reliance Jio has urged the telecom regulator to abstain from mandating a specific duration for calls to ring, and said the matter should be kept under forbearance as “there is no need for any regulatory intervention”. Jio said if at all the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) wants to take a view on the issue, it should be in form of a “reference guideline and not in form of a mandated value”.

“In such case, the range of 20 seconds to 25 seconds may be prescribed as reference guideline,” Jio informed Trai, which is in the process of finalising its views on the issue through a consultation paper.

Rival Bharti Airtel — which had charged Jio of arbitrarily shortening the ring time for outgoing calls from its network — has argued that low ringing time for calls directly impacts the customer experience, and asserted that standardising the value at both originating and terminating ends “is paramount at this stage”.