Reliance today announced the launch of Reliance Jio, which will offer users 4G services. The company has made some important announcements about its 4G launch, including its reasonable data packs and free voice calls among other features. The much anticipated Reliance Jio has finally commenced the commercial roll out of its 4G VoLTE services in India. In his hour long speech at the Annual General Meeting (AGM), the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries (RIL), MukeshAmbani, made some important announcements regarding the launch of Reliance Jio in India. Here are some of talking points from the company’s AGM:
- Welcome Offer
Launching on September 5, subscribers who join the Reliance Jio network will be eligible for a welcome offer under which they will have access to free and unlimited usage to Jio’s suite of services including voice, data and other bundled applications. The offer is valid till December 31, 2016, and is supposed to test the network stability of Jio alongside improving the services by taking feedback from its customers.
- Free Voice Calls
One of the noteworthy offerings by this service is that all domestic voice calls would be absolutely free including those made to the other operators as well. The subscribers will not have to worry about roaming within the country, as roaming charges will be zero across the nation. This will definitely hamper the progress of existing telecom operators as Jio has also eliminated all complex telecom charges like black-out days.
- An all-IP network
Jio has created an all-IP network. Most of the operators have networks built mainly for voice and then for data, but Jio has made its all-IP network, which makes it the most extensive and future-proof network in the country. Jio is a data strong network and it has already covered 18,000 cities and towns and about 200,000 villages. By March 2017, Jio will cover 90 per cent of India’s population.
- Tariff Plans
Ambani made an important announcement about Jio’s tariff plans. The subscriber needs to pay one price for Jio services including both data as well as voice. Jio is offering 1GB of 4G data for Rs 50 which is far cheaper than other telecom operators. Jio claims that these would be the lowest 4G LTE plans in the world. The effective rate of data would be 5p/MB, or Rs 50/GB. If this was not enough, users will get unlimited data usage at night which would be excluded from their existing data plan.
- Plans for Students
Jio will mainly cater to the youth of the country. It has introduced special plans for the students. Students with valid student identity cards will be benefitted with 25 per cent extra on every tariff plan. This plan will surely tempt the students and the youth in abundance.
- Low-cost Jio devices
Reliance Jio has already launched a few of its budget smartphones under its LYF brand. Its smartphones come with the VoLTE support and the price of these smartphones start at Rs 2,999.
- Verification and activation digitalized
The process of verification takes a lot of time and it takes one day to activate the new connection. But with the Jio services, users will be able to walk out with an activate connection within 15 minutes. Jio has come up with an e-KYC system by which, users will get their sim cards through their Aadhar card.
- Offers for the enterprise users
Reliance Jio has special offers for enterprise users such as high-end broadband plans. Also, Reliance is joining hands with several technology companies. The high-end plans would give reasonable tariff plans for international roaming users. The company will come up with several plans for the enterprise users in the next couple of days as well.
- Special attention on Wi-Fi
While this is still at a developing stage, Jio is planning to set up one million Wi-Fi hotspots by the next year. The company claims that the hotspots will help to reduce the network blockage.
- Attempting into the fibre segment
Last but not the least; Reliance is planning to attempt into the fibre segment to give the users ultra-high speed broadband connections to users. Initially, the service will roll out in the selected cities and will be available in the top 100 cities in the future.