New Delhi, Sep 22 ()
Reliance Jio Chairman
Mukesh Ambani will share the stage with other
telecom czars
Sunil Bharti Mittal of
Airtel and
Kumar Mangalam Birla of
Idea Cellular at the
India Mobile Congress here on Wednesday.
According to the website of the three-day event, which starts from September 27,
Vodafone Chief
Vittorio Colao will not be present in person, but will join other telecom leaders for the inaugural session through video link.
"Telecom Minister (
Manoj Sinha), Law and IT Minister (
Ravi Shankar Prasad) and Railways Minister (
Piyush Goyal) will join us for the inaugural session.
Heads of major telecom companies will be present in the session. We will connect with
Vittorio (Colao) over satellite," industry body COAI Director General
Rajan S Mathews told .
He said Telecom Secretary
Aruna Sundararajan and Electronics and IT Secretary
Ajay Prakash Sawhney will also be part of the session.
As per the agenda on the website,
Ambani will deliver the opening speech and
Mittal is one of the speakers.
Reliance Jio, which entered the telecom market about a year ago, has been at loggerheads with older telecom players --
Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone -- over multiple issues which have led to various litigations in the court.
Entry of
Jio has triggered a tariff war in the industry, which has led to reduction in earnings of the old telecom operators. The older players have knocked on the door of the government seeking relief for the debt ridden industry.
The latest bone of contention between the new entrant and established players is reduction in mobile call connection charges. Airtel, Vodafone and Idea had been demanding increase in mobile interconnect usage charge (IUC) to about 30-36 paise from 14 paise per minute and Jio has been demanding to do away with it altogether.
Regulator
Trai decided to bring down the charges to 6 paise per minute from October 1 and nil from January 2020.
Mathews said eight embassies, including those of the US, the UK, Finland and
Germany, are participating in the event and close to 150 foreign delegates have confirmed their participation.
"The
Indian Cellular Association has joined us for this event. We will get to see their members like
Nokia,
Vivo,
Oppo,
Huawei showcase their technologies,"
Mathews added.
The event, he further said, will be open to the public, but they will need to register for the same. PRS ARD