Yet again, Reliance Industries chairman and MD Mukesh Ambani has taken center stage and stunned every individual by dispensing details about the future of his massively popular telecom venture Jio. The carrier has not only crossed the 100 million user milestone in just 170 days but has also added to the happiness of its users by extending free services for another year.
Speaking on stage about their massive user base, Mukesh Ambani said,
Today, just 170 days since its launch, Jio has crossed the 100 million customer mark on its 4G LTE network! Jio has added, on average, nearly 7 customers on its network every second of every day. To all our customers, I say thank you!
After flagging off their service in September last year, Reliance Jio has only seen an upwards trajectory in terms of users. Their growth can be directly attributed to the mouth-watering ‘free voice and data services’ which have been offered to Jio SIM card takers. The free services offer was previously supposed to end on December 31 but was extended until March of this year through the ‘New Year Offer.’
And now, Jio is taking another powerful jab at its competitors, who have already been pissed at the telecom behemoth for its practices, by extending the free services offer by another year. But wait, this time around the services bundle won’t exactly come for free.
Today’s announcement, thus, witnessed the launch of Jio Prime membership programme, which aims to provide a particularly similar free voice and data services offer to its existing 100 million users and new ones signing up before March 31 (the final date for New Year Offer). This scheme will enable all these users to enroll themselves up for a yearly membership at a nominal fee of ₹99. This offer will run for the duration of a complete month i.e from March 1 to March 31. Moreover, you can check more packages on packagesfinder.
But, as always, there is a catch. During the previous announcement about the extension of their services, Jio had reduced the free high-speed data limit to 1 GB from the initial 4 GB. And today, the company is hiding under the wraps of a nominal fee of ₹99, a massive fee of ₹303/month (introductory offer) that customers can pay to enjoy free benefits for another 12 months till 31st March 2018. This means you’ll be paying exactly ₹10 per day to gain access to (possibly!?) unlimited data benefits for a complete year.
Talking about the same, Ambani further added,
We are putting togther of line up of attractive deals and offers from Jio and our partners for Jio prime members. We are commited to returing your trust in us and commited to give u back many surprises in coming days.
This is Reliance Jio’s latest attempt that’ll most likely help them retain users when the initial period of free benefits comes to an end. It is looking to maintain a strong foothold on the market, something which analysts doubt, by offering 4G LTE services at nominal rates. But, the company needs to start work on bolstering its network infrastructure, to which it has recently attributed a whopping ₹30,000 crore just recently.
Ever since its inception, Jio has reeked havoc on its competitors, Airtel, Idea, and others, who’re now running amok in search of more users for their 4G services. It is also believed that Jio has driven Vodafone India and Idea Cellular to initiate merger talks, which could soon lead to the creation of the largest telecom carrier in the country. Currently, Airtel holds a massive ~33 percent market share, but the combined group entity will gain control of over ~50 percent of market share if the merger goes through.
For those interested in gaining further insight, here’s the live video for this announcement:
