barcelona cellular operators association of india coai refused to say sorry to reliance jio after the association alleged that the mukesh ambani promoted firm was shown undue favours by telecom regulator trai over the past 1218 months including the latest one on predatory pricing jio slapped a defamation against coai and sought its immediate apology last week they are coai members too and this is not the first time we have been sent notices our concern is the trai order and its impact on the older operators said rajan mathews director general coai at the sidelines of mobile world congress 2018 in barcelona on monday we dont see this as an operator issue our idea was to highlight the problems the entire telecom sector is facing 5 companies are gone unemployment is spiking and revenues are at stake the government has to step in and reverse this the orders from the regulator in recent times has not been useful to the industry and the regulator has to be more neutral said mathewswith telcos reeling under debt and the impact of severe price cutting strategies initiated by reliance jio the last two years has seen the sector has seen a wave of consolidation tata groups wireless business was acquired by bharti airtel in late 2017 vodafone and idea cellular are on track for a mega merger to take on bharti airtel we are at a stage where there are three major players and bsnl and mtnl playing together this will continue for some time however if these activities continue revenue streams continue to be hit we can have a situation where existing companies decide to leave the country today the return on capital is 23 and these companies are saying they are better off leaving their money in savings bank accounts said matthewsthe coai director general added that the lobby has made several recommendations to trai and the government to address systemic issues the government has been very receptive they have recommended reduction in gst rates other levies and duties we are calling the attention of the ministry of finance and pmo because programs that they are keen on like digital india 4g penetration 5g deployment need massive investments the industry has thrived on private investment to date and we need the governments intervention to continue this way he saidamong the causalities of the winds of change hitting the telecom sector is aircel the company is expected to file for bankruptcy in the next few weeks and subscribers have already started porting out in massive numbers due to network outage while customers thronged aircel offices a senior aircel official told toi that networks were down due to the punitive action taken by its partners and network infrastructure providers till now we have been working with partners to help one another there comes a point where you cant continue to help and burden other operators aircel has not paid interconnect charges and these are commercial matters that we dont interfere in aircel