Reliance Jio’s Happy New Year Offer will replace the Welcome Offer. Here are the details.
Reliance Jio isn’t merely a telecom service provider, given they now have over 52 million subscribers in just under three months and are growing faster than Facebook, WhatsApp or Skype, if you go by the statement of RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani. In a major announcement, Ambani announced that they will rename the ‘Welcome Offer’ to ‘Happy New Year Offer’, which will now continue till March 31, 2017.
At an event held today in Mumbai, the RIL chief made a number of key announcements about Reliance Jio. So what exactly is the future of Reliance Jio, what happens to the Welcome Offer, and what is the ‘Happy New Year Offer? We answer all your questions around today’s big announcement.
Reliance Jio Happy New Year offer vs Welcome Offer
First, Reliance has not scrapped the ‘Welcome Offer’, but just renamed the offer. For starters, the users on the Welcome Offer will also be moved to the Happy New Year Offer from January 1, 2017. Also the free voice-call, video-call, free data and access to Jio apps has been extended till March 31, 2017.
All existing customer will continue to take advantage of the data, calls, and full bouquet of apps for free till March 31, 2017. Sadly new users who come on the Reliance Jio service after December 4 will be added straight to the Happy New Year Offer, and not to the Welcome Offer.
So how does that matter?
Well the Happy New Year Offer comes with an FUP limit that is only 1GB per day. Yes, that’s right; compared to the 4GB FUP on the Welcome Offer, Happy New Year will limit how much free high-speed data you can download on the Jio network.
Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani says this was done because some users are misusing their free data privileges and clogging it up for the rest of the people on the networks. This is not surprising to hear given this is free data we are talking about. Jio will reduce speeds to 128kbps after a user exhausts the 1GB limit on the Happy New Year plan.
Does Jio plan to charge customers from January 1?
Nope, the free calling and data option still continues. It’s just that you’ll get less daily data in your allowance.
Will Reliance deliver SIM cards home?
Yes, this is also true. Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani announced they will deliver Jio SIMs at home for customers, and it will be activated within 5 minutes via eKYC. The service will go live in 100 cities by December 31.
What’s this Jio Money deal?
Given the demonetisation drive, we’ve seen a lot of emphasis on digital payments app, and Jio Money is another one of them. Jio Money was always part of the apps suite from the company, but now they have bigger plans.
Ambani announced the Jio Money merchant solution app which he claims will be available across millions of touch points. He further went to say that Aadhaar-based micro-ATMs will be deployed to help increase the usage of Jio Money. Starting December 5, merchants can download the app. The initial target is to have at least 10 million merchants on the platform, Ambani said.
How many subscribers does Reliance Jio have?
Reliance Jio has over 52 million subscribers in under three months. This is a big accomplishment, given the fact that an established telecom service provider like Airtel just recently crossed the 250 million subscriber mark.
So what about Jio’s speeds? And voice call drops?
Ambani admitted they have had teething troubles but are promising to fix the issue of speeds. According to him, only 8 of their towers had congestion, while rest 92 per cent are working at optimum speeds. Reliance says it will work to remove congestion in its networks and improve speeds. It also says the voice call drop rates are now down to 20 per cent from the earlier 90 per cent. INDAIN EXP