Jio sets high benchmark for telcos

​Mumbai: Storming his way into the telecom industry, India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani on Thursday announced free voice calls and free national roaming along with rock-bottom data prices on his new Reliance Jio network that will debut on Sept 5.

In his 90-minute speech at Reliance Industries’ shareholder meet to make a slew of announcements on Jio, he took competition head-on by announcing free services on Jio for four months beginning Sept 5. Voice calling will be free on Jio for life and post Dec 31, 10 data plans will be offered 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.

Ambani stopped short, however, of calling January 1 as the commercial launch of Jio which will offer only fourth- generation (or 4G services) in the world’s second-largest smartphone market. “Customers should pay for only one service, either voice or data and not both. The era of paying for voice calls is ending,” he said.

“No Jio customer will ever have to pay for voice calls again,” he said, adding that there would be no national roaming charges for Jio users. For data, Ambani set an aggressive rate of 5 paisa per MB (or Rs 50 per GB). “And, the more data you use, the lower the rate,” he said.

“Data packs available in the market have an effective rate of about Rs 250 per GB. With Jio, you pay 5 to 10 times lower - Rs 25-50 per GB depending on your data usage,” Ambani said, targeting 100 million customers in the shortest time possible.

He also announced a 25 per cent more data for students, one million Wi-Fi hotspots across the country, “best-ever international calling rates”, unlimited subscription to Jio app and special solutions for enterprises. “Jio’s data, voice, video and full bouquet of Jio applications and content will be available for everyone, absolutely free, till December 31, 2016,” he said, promising to offer data speeds of up to 1 gigabyte per second.

He didn’t mince words when talking about the competition, asking them “not to misuse their market power by creating unfair hurdles, when it comes to providing points of interconnect between their networks and Jio’s networks”. Telecom operators not only have legal obligation to provide points of interconnect to other operators but also cannot limit customers’ right to migrate to Jio using Mobile Number Portability (MNP), he said.