Three days after the news about Jio being available only till December broke, the company has extended the deadline. Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries had recently launched a welcome offer of free voice calls and data, available only to those who buy the subscription by December 3. However, the latest reports which were doing the rounds suggested that Reliance Jio will extend the offer for an additional three months, that is, until March 2017.Reliance Industries had recently launched a welcome offer of free voice calls and data, available only to those who buy the subscription by December 3. However, the latest reports which were doing the rounds suggested that Reliance Jio will extend the offer for an additional three months, that is, until March 2017.
The reasons for this kind of myth was:
Ever since its launch, Reliance Jio’s services have been completely free, with the aim of testing the network before launching commercial operations. On September 4, Ambani had announced his unique way to connect the country and support Prime Minister Modi’s Digital India campaign with his ambitious plan.
Ambani, while announcing the launch on September 1, had said that voice calling on Jio would be free for life and data would be charged at rock-bottom rates after the expiry of the welcome offer. After the TRAI order, the company did not indicate the tariffs to be charged to users taking services after December 4. Operators like Bharti Airtel and Vodafone, along with industry body COAI, had approached the regulator against the new entrant’s scheme of offering free calls and unlimited data access to consumers till December 31, 2016. They had also complained that given the free data offer, a “tsunami” of “asymmetric” traffic originating from the Reliance Jio network was coming to their 
networks, leading to an increased number of call drops.
networks, leading to an increased number of call drops.
According to reports, Jio’s head of strategy and planning said that “it would be unfair to charge customers until the Jio management is fully satisfied with the quality of service.”
TRAI reports have suggested that Jio is the slowest 4G service in India.
In a recently conducted interview, Ambani was heard saying that his new telecom venture Jio is not a gamble but a well-thought-out and well-engineered business, while comparing the trouble with interconnectivity to a meritorious student “getting ragged.” Considering the repeated call connectivity issues with other networks, TRAI had imposed a fine of over Rs 3,050 crore on other networks like Airtel, Vodafone, and Idea.
So people started believing this hoax of Reliance Jio may extend Welcome Offer to March 2017.
But the truth is Reliance Jio is silent on whether or not the company will extend its Welcome Offer beyond December 31. Jio had announced Welcome Offer on September 5, under which it allows unlimited HD voice and video calling, unlimited SMS, high-speed data and access to a host of Jio premium apps till 31st December, 2016.
As per Real Time News, Jio officials have denied media reports that it has extended the Welcome Offer till March 2017. “When we checked, sources in the company said such a decision has not been taken yet. The company, which announces all its major decisions to the media and the stock exchanges, has also not made any announcement in this regard”, said the news report.
With gradual improvement in interconnection of calls between Jio and other incumbent operators, Jio is unlikely to extend the promotional scheme and announce its non-promotional tariffs period.
The telecom regulator has also taken Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular to task for not providing enough interconnection points to Jio. TRAI on Oct 21 slapped heavy penalties on three telecom players amounting to Rs 3,050 crore for not providing sufficient PoIs to Reliance Jio.
Moreover, Jio is also on the way to upgrade its infrastructure by installing more towers. The company is expected to install around 45,000 mobile towers in the next six months to boost its 4G network.
With the above measures in place, the interconnection between Jio and other service providers is bound to improve, and Reliance Jio may not extend the Welcome Offer of free calls, SMSs in its struggle to retain or garner subscribers.
No comments:
Post a Comment