A big Reliance Jio announcement is on the cards on December 1. Reliance Industries Limited’s Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani will be addressing the employees and stakeholders of the company and the event will be broadcast live at 1.30 pm on the company’s social media channels.
Reports have indicated
Reliance Jio’s Welcome offer, which gives customers free unlimited voice, video
calling, SMS and unlimited daily data could be extended to March 2017. However,
a TRAI order had said that Reliance will have to end the Jio 4G Welcome offer
by December 4.
Interestingly, a Jio
spokesperson said the Jio Welcome Offer or JWO “benefits of free unlimited
Voice and data will be available to all subscribers up to December 31, 2016”.
But, the “JWO will be available to new consumers for subscription till December
3, 2016,” the spokesperson said. This means new customers who buy a Jio SIM
post December 3 won’t be able to get the free offer and will have to try out
the paid tariff plans.
But given the level of interest in Jio, Mukesh
Ambani’s announcement tomorrow will be closely watched. Reliance Jio already
has over 50 million subscribers in just 83 days since the service went live.
The company has set a target of 100 million subscribers.
Jio’s entry in the
market has sparked a data war with rivals Airtel, Vodafone offering extra data
and slashing prices for their consumers in order to retain them. With Reliance
Jio, there is another service called Jio Fiber which is much-awaited. Jio Fiber
is promising 1GBps speed for wired broadband in home, and is already being
tested in some parts of India.
In fact as IndianExpress.com had reported, Jio Fiber will not just promise high-speed
internet, but will also have a very strong content play just like the Jio
smartphones. It will offer a wide variety of television channels, movies, and
games, all bundled together.
While the Jio launch
has seen people line up to get SIMs, there are issues with speeds and call
connectivity that have cropped up since the number of subscribers went up.
Since Reliance Jio is entirely a 4G LTE based network, high-speed internet is
crucial to its success, but post the launch it has found it difficult to
maintain this.
In October, Speedtest
app maker Ookla’s data had shown that they saw a significant jump
in the number of speed-tests being done on Jio 4G LTE network from January to
September 2016. Speedtest’s data also showed that Reliance Jio’s mean average
speeds have been declining since it got more users on board.
According to the data,
speeds for “4G capable phones actually decreased 23% month-over-month from
11.31 Mbps to 8.77 Mbps, continuing a downward trend for 2016.” The report also
adds that Reliance Jio’s claims of 135Mbps as average speed across the board
are still a dream, and that even the “top 10% of tests averaged out at 17.77
Mbps in September.”
Declining speeds
aside, Reliance Jio has been seen as a great disruptor in the Indian smartphone
and data market. According to research firm IDC, India has seen a boost in 4G
smartphone shipments with Jio’s entry.
Reliance has not yet
confirmed what it will be announcing at tomorrow’s big event, but no doubt the
Jio side of the story will be closely watched from all quarters.
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