He added that he would wait to compare Jio’s network quality with other operators before deciding to switch. Speaking at the AGM of Reliance Industries, its chief Mukesh Ambani had said Reliance Jio customers suffered 5 crore call failures in the previous week to other networks due to insufficient interconnect capacity.
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Mr Ambani, who unveiled details of his new venture to shareholders last week, has set a target of acquiring 100 million subscribers as soon as possible. It is the forecast of USA brokerage Goldman Sachs that Reliance Jio could garner 35 million subscribers over the next two years with data volume growth for competition slowing down to 50 per cent in FY17 from 70 per cent in FY16.
On COAI Director General Rajan S. Mathews criticism that the claim of free calls is not entirely correct as the tariffs bundle data and voice, Reliance Jio on Friday clarified that the data used for the voice calls will neither be charged nor deducted from the data balance of the subscriber.
“I am hoping Jio can help me bring down my bills while providing unlimited internet usage”, said Pushpraj Yadav, an e-commerce worker in Mumbai who complains he “incurs huge bills” for his data use.
“Moreover, Bharti Airtel has first-mover advantage in 4G technology, having launched the services in many parts of the country over the past 1-2 years”. Plus, there’s free WiFi data and SMSes for most of these plans. All charges for voice-calls and for roaming have been done away by the company.
Combined with ever-cheaper smartphones, the new 4G network will swell the number of internet users and prompt those already using data, millions of them on sluggish 2G networks, to upgrade.
Meanwhile, investors, too, have been pretty harsh on telecom firms.
He mentioned that investors in the company understand that Reliance has phases of big investments followed by a period of steady returns.
The department of telecommunications (DoT) has distanced itself from the fight between Reliance Jio Infocomm and incumbent operators like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular over interconnection issues.
Ambani is said to have constructed almost 100,000 telecoms towers across India and estimates that Jio already covers some 18,000 cities and 200,000 villages.
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Mr Gogia said India was an open market and needed at least three to five players for prices to normalise in the future. Would also like to inform that voice services for Jio are experiencing high congestion and since you are a high-value customer this will impact your business.
