Reliance Jio alleges fraud by incumbent telcos to earn IUC revenue

NEW DELHI : Reliance Jio has alleged that Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd are masquerading fixed landline numbers as mobile numbers to earn undue revenue through the interconnect usage charge.

In a letter to the telecom regulator, Jio has alleged this is a fraudulent attempt by incumbent telecom operators for which they must be penalised.

“The incumbent operators have implemented a process under which various enterprises are offered mobile numbers as their customer care or helpline numbers. In these cases, the mobile number is used just as a virtual number for routing all such calls to call centres,” Jio said in a letter dated 14 October.