He had also called Jio a “revolutionary” step to realise India’s digital ambitions. Ambani had revealed during the launch of the network that voice calls would be absolutely free for any calls made from the Jio network to any network.
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Ambani, who was interrupted by repeated rounds of applause as he took shareholders in a packed auditorium through Jio’s ambitious rollout plans, free countrywide roaming offering and more, vowed to “transform India from a high-priced data market to one with the lowest data rates anywhere in the world”. It offers the plans starting from Rs. 149 per month offering 300MB of data, all the way up to Rs. 4,999 per month.
“Free voice is key to making Reliance Jio’s integrated plans much more compelling cost-wise than those of peers”, stated JPMorgan analyst Viju George in a note to clients.
His announcement triggered declines in rivals’ shares, paring $1.8bn off the market value of Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular. Jio will bring transformational changes in the Indian digital services space to enable the Honourable Prime Minister’s vision of Digital India for 1.2 billion Indians.
Countering cellular operators association’s charges that the company was bundling its voice with data, Reliance Jio said that the “data used for the voice calls will also neither be charged nor deducted from the data balance of the subscriber”. Though consumers are elated with the various freebies and offers that come with a Reliance Jio SIM, the worst hit by the extensive offers are rival telecom companies.
It was initially due to offer 4G mobile services from the end of 2015 but pushed the date back several times without explaining why, as Bharti Airtel snapped up millions of customers. With the very low prices, Reliance Jio preview offer has lead to a price war in the telecom sector. It also covers 200MB Wi-Fi data (via JioNet Hotspot app), Jio apps subscription worth Rs 1250, and unlimited SMS (local and national).
The only word that we can use to describe the plans offered by Jio is “disruptive”.
COAI Director General Rajan S Mathews, who has locked horns with Reliance Jio over interconnect issues, told Mail Today that Reliance Jio’s challenge will be to maintain quality of service on its network once the traffic volumes go up.
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Meanwhile, many of these companies are already likely to benefit from Jio services. It will be available in 18,000 cities in the country and in 200,000 remote areas.
