Reliance Jio rollout on 15 Aug with free voice services
14 Jul 2016
Reliance Jio plans to roll out its fourth generation (4G) voice and data services on 15 August, offering ''freedom from call charges'' where users won't be charged for local and STD voice calls, reports today said.
''The company is working out plans to offer free voice to get a large numbers of consumers to migrate,'' The Hindu cited a source as saying. ''All local and STD calls will be free. However, the consumer will have to pay for international calls and international roaming.''
Mukesh Ambani initially started Reliance Jio services for his employees on 28 December 2015 and then extended the offer to their friends and families by offering five Jio sim cards to each employee. Now it is offering free Jio sim cards with Reliance Lyf handsets for a price of Rs2,999. The offer comes with free unlimited data for three months, another source said.
The company already has 6 million consumers using the Jio network, about 1.5 million of its own and 4.5 million of Reliance Communications consumers who migrated from CDMA to 4G (RCom has a network sharing pact with RJio).
Reliance officials are tight-lipped about the introduction of the service and the offerings to be made by Jio during its rollout. A company spokesperson declined to comment and an e-mail sent to Jio seeking comments failed to elicit a response.
The company now plans to offer free Jio sim cards to all 4G-enabled smartphone users in India, currently at less than 10 million, and expected to reach 50 million by the end of this fiscal.
''Most of the 4G-enabled handsets in India have dual sim slots. The idea is to give free simcards to all the users with 4G-enabled smart phones. The user may use our high-speed voice and data services and I am confident that with unmatched service experience, he will be a Jio consumer,'' a third source said.
