The free data party's over at Reliance Jio. But the cellular data party continues at an unbeatable price! Mukesh Ambani confirmed that existing Jio subscribers will be offered a chance to continue with the Happy New Year plan -- which is set to expire at the end of March 31 -- at the nominal cost of Rs 99 for a full year. That¡¯s right, just Rs 99 for one year¡¯s worth of free 4G VoLTE data.
Mukesh Ambani Unveils Reliance Jio Prime Membership Plan for Rs 99 Per Year
Enrollment of the Jio Prime Membership will last only for existing Jio subscribers for a short duration starting from March 1 till March 31, 2017.
Mukesh Ambani also confirmed that Jio has crossed the 100 million subscribers mark. In just 170 days, Jio has added seven customers in every second of every single day. Starting April 1, Jio will start enacting tariff plans. No more free data from April 1 onwards.?Mukesh Ambani claimed that Reliance Jio will not only match the best value offers in comparison to Jio¡¯s competition, but it will offer 20% additional data than its competitors at any given tariff plan.
In his speech delivered in front of Reliance Jio employees, Mukesh Ambani claimed that because of the rapid adoption of Jio by consumers all over India, and thanks to the hard work of 60,000 Jio employees, over 10 lakh Jio retail partners around the country, India has now become the #1 global mobile data consumer in the world -- ahead of USA and China. He also promised that by the end of 2017 that Reliance Jio network will cover 99% of India¡¯s population, strengthening its position in India¡¯s major cities, towns and villages.
Reliance Jio¡¯s popularity knows no bound right now. In fact, the Mukesh Ambani-led 4G VoLTE cellular service provider has become the primary mobile data connection gateway in India, according to a report. As much as 42% users have activated Jio in their 4G-enabled SIM slot of their smartphones, followed by Airtel at 17.54%, Vodafone at 12.26% and Idea at 11.50%, a consumer mobile analytics app revealed in January 2017.
Reliance Jio is also leading the race in terms of smartphone data consumption in India, with a Reliance Jio user consuming 6.54GB of Internet data on average compared to 1.28GB on Airtel, 1.29GB on Vodafone and 1.32GB on Idea.
The writing was on the wall for everyone to see. Reliance Jio juggernaut has been gathering momentum ever since it launched less than six months ago on September 1, 2016. With the promise of free data and access to a whole host of Internet communication, shopping and entertainment apps, Reliance Jio has fundamentally disrupted the Indian telecom sector. Local telco operators have suffered and have been forced to think out of the box to deal with life in a world where Reliance Jio subscribers just continue to grow in number -- over 10 crores have signed up in less than six months, which is simply unprecedented.
Vodafone and Idea have been forced to merge together, Bharti Airtel¡¯s revenue has dropped for the first time in a long time when it reported its lowest profit in four years. Airtel even dragged Jio to Competition Commission of India, accusing the Mukesh Ambani-led telco of ¡®predatory pricing¡¯, but TRAI gave Jio a clean chit. All signs of a major uproar. There¡¯s little doubt that Reliance Jio has caused a major dent in the Indian telecom market.
What about complaints of bad network or lack of coverage? Reliance Jio¡¯s trying to address these problems, and Mukesh Ambani has invested an extra Rs 30,000 crore as recently as January 2017 to ensure Jio continues to provide 4G VoLTE cellular data without any hiccups in all of India. To say that Reliance Jio is hell bent on beating its competition (Airtel, Idea, Vodafone, etc) and capture the Indian telecom market would be an understatement.