At an event on Thursday, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani said that the free services under the Reliance Jio Welcome Offer have been extended till March 31 as part of the Reliance Jio New Year offer, among other announcements related to the telecom venture.
“Starting December 4, 2016, every new Jio user will get the data, voice, and full bouquet of the Jio apps free till 31, 2017,” Mukesh Ambani said about the Reliance Jio extended welcome offer. “This is the Jio Happy New Year Offer.
All our existing 52 million users will continue to enjoy the welcome offer till 31 and then automatically sign up for the new year offer. No need to buy a new SIM.”
During the Reliance Jio extended offer announcement, Mukesh Ambani also announced that users will now have a daily FUP limit of 1GB under the Reliance Jio Happy New Year Offer, which if exhausted will result in slower speeds.
The reason behind the FUP change in the Reliance Jio Happy New Year Offer, Mukesh Ambani said, was that 80 percent of its current users consumed 1GB of data per day, while 20 percent consumed disproportionately higher amounts, which ended up congesting the network. The Reliance Jio Welcome Offer had a daily FUP limit of 4GB.
After the launch of Reliance Jio in September, the company has seen a mixed reception, with long queues for SIM cards and many complaints about slow speeds.
Mukesh Ambani elaborated on this, saying that the reason was the free welcome offer. “With 52 million customers taking full advantage of the free welcome offer, it has caused slowdowns, but only on 8 percent of our towers,” he said.
“And 92 percent of our customers and towers have been experiencing high data speeds.”
Since then, reports have suggested that the Welcome Offer, wherein all Jio services were being given completely free, might be extended to March 2017, as Jio claimed that customers faced “quality of service issues due to interconnection congestion” and told Trai that until “we are in a position where we can deliver the quality of service as desired by the Jio management, it will be unfair to charge the customer.”
Mukesh Ambani also said that Reliance Jio has been taking a lot of feedback from users and making changes according to it, including new Aadhaar-based services that will be powered by the same infrastructure as the eKYC activation.
At the announcement, Mukesh Ambani also confirmed that Jio has signed up 6 lakh customers every day for three months, thanks to eKYC, and said, “On average, a Jio customer is using 25 times the data that an average broadband user consumes.
” In the three months since the launch, it has seen millions of Indians signing up, and Mukesh Ambani added that he hopes millions more will join soon.
He added that there are 2 lakh eKYC outlets—”nearly” equal to the total number of ATMs in India,” Mukesh Ambani pointed out – and that there will be 4 lakh outlets by March 2017.
“We are the fastest growing technology company, not only in India, but in the history of the world,” said Mukesh Ambani, adding, “in the three months, it’s grown faster than Facebook, or WhatsApp, and the fastest growing LTE network.”
At the same time, Mukesh Ambani also claimed that nearly 900 crore voice calls from Reliance Jio were blocked by other telcos, and added that Jio thanks the government and Trai for enforcing the license conditions.
He added, “call block rates have come down from over 90 percent to nearly 20 percent yesterday, and we are working with all operators to bring this to within the limit of 0.2 percent.”
Mukesh Ambani also added that Jio now fully supports MNP so all customers can retain their number while migrating to Jio.
He added that the company has now integrated the home delivery of Jio SIMs.
The SIM can be activated through eKYC once delivered, Mukesh Ambani said. “This will be available in all the top cities by 31 December 2016.”
