Mukesh Ambani extends Jio free voice & data offer till March 31

Reliance Industries telecom arm grows faster than Facebook, Whatsapp in first 3 months

MUMBAI: Buoyed by Reliance Jio growing faster than Facebook and Whatsapp in first three months of launch to reach 52 million customer base, India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani on Thursday announced extension of free domestic voice calls and data till March 31.

With over 52 million customers taking Jio’s free voice and data since its launch on September 4, he announced ‘Jio Happy New Year Offer’ of free data, voice, video and applications till March 31 for new users joining from December 4 as well as the existing ones.

However, the plan will come with a Fair Usage Policy (FUP) which will cap data for Reliance Jio customers at around 1 GB per day.

Ambani, 59, also announced a rollout of Jio Money Merchant Solutions, a mobile payment application, for enabling digital payment for small merchants at their various points of transactions.

“Jio has become the fastest growing technology company, not only in India, but in the history of the world! In the first three months since its birth, Jio has grown faster than Facebook, Whatsapp or Skype,” he said.

Jio has crossed 50 million customers in first 83 days (user base now is over 52 million).

“Starting 4th of December, 2016, every new Jio user will get Jio’s data, voice, video and the full bouquet of Jio applications and content, absolutely free till March 31, 2017,” he said, adding that the benefit will also be extended to the existing users.

Ambani, who had more than a decade ago left the telecom business to younger brother Anil when the Reliance empire their father had created was split, formally re-entered the sector in September, offering free voice call for life and free data till December 31.

After that, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd was to offer data for INR 50 per GB and a monthly plan for as low as INR 149.

Justifying the change in FUP, he said 20 per cent of users consuming disproportionately high amount of data, leading to congestion in network.

“During this period, Jio customers will also be able to test-drive Jio’s digital recharge and billing experience, especially using the Jiomoney wallet,” he said.

According to Ambani, Jio has already crossed 50 million customers in the three months since launch on September 1.

Story Pageambani extends Jio free voice, data offer till March 31

Ambani, whose company had a bitter war of words with dominant incumbent telecom operators like Bharti Airtel over providing points of interconnection, said lack of support from existing operators had resulted in nearly 900 crore voice calls to other networks being blocked.