Vodafone Idea has countered Reliance Jio’s request to the telecommunications regulator for a sunset date or timeline for shutting down 2G networks.

Reliance Jio, which entered the telecommunications industry with 4G has a purely 4G and 5G network, unlike Vodafone Idea and Airtel who have subscribers on their 2G network predating the 4G era.

According to The Hindu, responding to a consultation paper floated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Reliance Jio said that the government should come out with a policy for closing down the 2G and 3G networks completely so that unnecessary network costs could be avoided and all customers could be migrated to 4G and 5G services.

According to Reliance Jio, this will also give great impetus to developing ecosystem to 5G use cases.

In counter comments for the same consultation paper, Vi characterised these comments by Jio to be rhetoric in nature that ignore the significant impact on existing customers from the network shutdown.

“Any forceful shutdown through regulatory mandate, will lead to low income and marginal consumers being forced out of accessing the basic telecom services, thus increasing the digital divide,” Vi said in its counter-comments.