Reliance Jio offers free voice calls, cheapest data packs -Governance Now

Reliance Jio offers free voice calls, cheapest data packs

Reliance Jio data packs will come for Rs 50 for 1GB, around 5 paise per MB – “cheapest in the world”

GN Bureau | September 1, 2016

#Reliance Industries #RIL #Digital India #TRAI #Vodafone #Airtel #free voice call #mobile data #Reliance Jio 4G #Mukesh Ambani #Reliance Jio

Mukesh Ambani, chairman, RIL

The anticipated blood bath in the telecom sector is about to begin. Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) chairman Mukesh Ambani launched the Reliance Jio service at the company’s annual general meeting in Mumbai on Thursday. Giving details of the much anticipated service, Ambani said, “We are calling this the Jio welcome offer.”

By offering one gigabyte (GB) of data for Rs 50 to the Reliance Jio subscribers, Ambani urged the subscribers to do “data giri”. “If [you] use more data, your price will drop to Rs 25 per GB,” he added.

In a bid to fulfill prime minister Narendra Modi’s vision for India, Ambani said, “World’s demand for data is growing. Quality education should reach each corner of the country, quality healthcare should be powered by e-healthcare, e-banking should ensure financial inclusion. The world should look towards India.”

Following are the highlights of the new service

Starting September 5, voice calls, SMS and roaming services will be free for Reliance Jio subscribers.
Reliance Jio data packs will come for Rs 50 for 1GB, that is around 5 paise per MB – “cheapest in the world”.
The data packs will give access to many premium Jio apps to the users. The premium apps will be free till December 31, 2017. Users will be charged as per data packs after December 31.
Around 2.8 million songs, 6,000 movies and thousands of magazines and newspapers will be added for Jio subscribers.
Jio will not follow the industry practice of blackout days, occasions like Diwali, when free SMS offers are not applicable.
Students can avail 25% extra discount on data packs by showing their valid ID proofs.
Reliance had already rolled out 4G services for a limited number of subscribers - around two million - including its own employees, in the initial test phase.
India’s biggest profit making corporate house expects that by 2017 it will cover 90 percent of country’s population. Reliance Jio is currently present in 18 cities and towns and 2 lakh villages.
With the launch of Jio, India’s rank among cellular country users will shoot up to the top 10 list.
To protect their own turf, the existing telecom service providers have heavily cut down data charges. Airtel has reduced the price of 4G data by 80 percent, Vodafone and Idea Cellular by 67 percent. Until now consumers paid Rs 250 for one GB data on an average.

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