India’s mobile operators must focus on improving services rather than fighting amongst themselves following government announcements of steps to ease their financial pressures, telecom minister Manoj Sinha said.

“The most important thing for the telcos to do now is to give good services to consumers,” the minister told The Economic Times (ET).

He was responding to a row between Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular on one side and Reliance Jio on the other: the established trio argue Jio engaged in predatory pricing practices since it opened for business in 2016, which have heavily impacted their earnings.

Earlier this week the government agreed to increase the spectrum holding limit in a service area from 25 per cent to 35 per cent and extended the payment terms from ten years (excluding a two-year moratorium), to 16 years. The aim is to encourage consolidation in the industry by making it easier for operators to sell off spectrum assets to pay down debt, as well as to increase cash flow and give near-term relief to operators faced with huge debts, and falling revenue and profitability.

“The cabinet’s decisions will give them immediate relief,” Sinha stated. “The decisions will help consolidation, give a fillip to investments and improve the ease of doing business in the sector.”

As for the government lowering the interest rate on outstanding dues Sinha said: “this decision does not need to go to cabinet — we will take a call on it”.

Operators have said the measures will provide minimal benefit as issues such as high taxes still remain, ET reported.

To this, Sinha said the government was bound by the rules and timeline for spectrum auctions, but had taken all possible legal steps to help.