India’s telecom sector is a hotbed for news these days. And as is seldom the case, its once again Jio, which is making the news. The Mukesh Ambani led Reliance Jio today announced the launch of nationwide voice and video calling feature over wifi networks. We knew this was in the making for quite some time, and a final commercial rollout is happening today. It allows customers to make and receive calls over a wifi network using their existing jio phone numbers.
This new feature will address the problem of signal issues in remote areas or cellular dark zones of a building at no additional costs. Customers can use this feature with any wifi or broadband service. Jio has issued a step by step guide at www.jio/wificalling where customers can find whether their device supports this feature or not.
Another area where Wifi calling could be a game-changer in reducing call drops and poor voice quality by telecom operators in India. Wifi calls are of much better quality than traditional telecommunication. The feature came into limelight after WhatsApp enabled such functionality.
Akash Ambani, director of Jio stated, “The launch of jio wifi calling will further enhance every jio costumers voice calling experience, which is already a benchmark for the industry with Indias first of all Volte network.”
Jio however, isn’t the first to roll this out. Airtel has already rolled out this feature earlier for its 260 million customer base at select places across the country. Airtel supports this feature in Mumbai, Kolkata, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu to subscribers of its broadband service. Vodafone still doesn’t support this feature.
