Airtel responds to TRAI complaint by Jio during farmers protests

During the protests, a photo of a mobile number portability booth by Airtel cropped up and Jio made an official complaint to TRAI about the same.

In a written complaint to TRAI – Reliance Industries’ owned Jio has asked the body to take action against its rival networks Bharti Airtel and Vi (formerly Vodafone Idea) for allegedly turning customer perception towards it in the context of the farmers protests.

“We once again bring to your kind attention that as a result of aforementioned false propaganda of competitors to affect customer perception, we have been receiving a large number of port out (cancellation) requests,” Reliance Jio said in the letter, as reported by LiveMint.

A photo of a booth that allows users to port their numbers into Airtel and Vodafone networks surfaced on Twitter.

This is the next level protest. Farmers have installed a stall and invited Airtel & Vi sales team to do MNP.

Ye to bolte karna shuru kar de rahe..#FarmersProtests pic.twitter.com/PmWNaXaNFr

— Mike Purnow (@Purnoww) December 13, 2020

Jio claimed that both Airtel and Vodafone India are directly or indirectly involved in supporting and furthering the ensued notions, and "false frivolous" rumours of Reliance being an undue beneficiary of the farm bills, according to a report by The News Minute.

Airtel responded to Jio's complaint and wrote to TRAI described the complaint as "outrageous" and "scurrilous". According to the NewsMinute report, in its letter, Airtel said: "Airtel has operated in the telecom industry for 25 years. During this period, we have competed hard in the market place and striven to serve our customers with excellence. At the same time we take great pride in treating our competitors and partners with respect."