After what was one of the most startling announcements of the year, Reliance Jio has been in the news for one reason or the other. Be it about how Ambani put the other telecom operators at a loss with his presentation, or with Jio being fraudulent, or the promotional offers of Jio coming to light. The most recent of these is when competitors pointed out that Jio violated the rules of TRAI and hence needed to be banned.
But new reports have surfaced which say that TRAI has infact given Jio a nod with respect to its “free voice calls for lifetime.” The original documents filed with the institution clearly state that the Jio offers promotional services, including free unlimited 4G data among others, is only till December 31st which in inside the 90-day promotional binding period. After that, Jio will price 1GB of data at about Rs. 50 on average, about one fifth of what rivals charge. This has forced competitors like Vodafone, Airtel and Tata Docomo to drop their rates too.
“Jio has received communication from Trai stating that the tariff plans offered by it are fully compliant with regulatory norms of IUC compliance, non-predatory and non-discriminatory. This establishes the fact that all tariffs offered by Jio are in compliance with prevailing regulations,” TRAI said in a statement. Also, the company confirmed that the voice calls have been charged as usual by 2 paise per second in the document submitted and if Jio is offering lifetime of free services, then the tariff will be paid through another of their network.
Mr. Ambani has set a target of 100 million customers for Jio and owning to the rate at which the subscribers are growing, that target might soon be reached. Although, TRAI has told in one of their statements that Jio’s data is the slowest in the country with an average speed of 2.4 Mbps. Whether Jio survives the test of time would be interesting to see.
