Telecom stocks wiped out almost Rs 16,997 crore as Mukesh Ambani read out Jio’s plans at Reliance AGM.
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The launch of Reliance Jio 4G services today was bound to draw attention all over the globe including the India Inc as the telecom startup promises to offer what no other telco has offered yet – free voice calls for life, besides offering the cheapest data rate. Over the past few weeks, Reliance Jio has been expanding its unlimited calls and high-speed mobile broadband trial offer to 4G smartphone users of brands such as HTC, Intex, Vivo, Gionee, Karbonn and Lava. The first being that the customer should pay for only voice or data, secondly data must be affordable and finally, pricing structure should be simple. “World over, operators charge only for data, voice and messaging are essentially free”.
“The era of paying for voice calls is ending”, Ambani told the Annual General Meeting of RelianceIndustries (RIL) in Mumbai.
As per this plan, Plan Rs. 2,499, Reliance Jio will offer unlimited and free voice calls and SMS and 60 GB of data for 28 days. Additionally it would offer unlimited night time LTE data.
Take a look at the tariff plans from below. However, with the other plans, once you count the Wi-Fi hotspot data as well, it does work out to the rate that was announced – for example, the Rs. 499 pack gives you a total of 12GB including Wi-Fi, which works out to approximately Rs. 42 per GB. And this does not account for the unlimited 4G at night you will get as well. Also, there is no roaming charges that the Reliance Jio users have to pay.
He also added that data must be affordable for all users. Ambani said, “Jio is the creation of the young, by the young and of the young”.
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Data tariff will be as low as Rs. 50/GB for 4G/LTE, the cost could go down to Rs. 25/GB depending on the nature of data expenses, its like the greater the usage, the lower the cost will be. Students get further discounts and by through Jio hotspots, free night-time data, etc, consumers will get more data at even cheaper rates. He also announced a “free welcome offer” for Jio customers from September 5 till December 31, i.e free data services for four months, after which it will offer 10 tariff plans starting at Rs 19 a day for occasional users, Rs 149 a month for low data users and Rs 4,999 a month for heavy data users.
