Reliance Jio to end free data from 1 April

Reliance Jio has finally ended its free data party and will start charging its customers from April. Beginning the next financial year, Jio's tariff plan will kick off, says Mukesh Ambani.

While Jio will charge its customers for data use, Ambani said, all domestic voice calls to any network will be free across India. There will be no roaming charges, no hidden charges and no blackout days, he said.

Reliance Jio's cellular data party will continue 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 - at the nominal cost of Rs99 for a full year, ie, one year's worth of free 4G VoLTE data at just Rs99.

Enrollment of existing Jio subscribers for Jio Prime Membership will run for the whole of March - from 1 t0 31 March 2017.

Mukesh Ambani also confirmed that Jio has crossed the 100-million subscriber mark in less than six months of its launch on 1 September 2016 (in just 170 days), saying it added seven customers every second of every single day, he said.

Mukesh Ambani claimed that Reliance Jio will not only match the best value offers in comparison to Jio's competition, but will offer 20-per cent more data than its competitors in any given tariff plan.

Ambani said this has been made possible because of the rapid adoption of Jio by consumers all over India, thanks to the hard work of 60,000 Jio employees and over 10 lakh Jio retail partners around the country.

India, he said, has now become the No 1 global mobile data consumer in the world - ahead of the US and China. He also promised that by the end of 2017 that Reliance Jio network will cover 99 per cent of India's population, strengthening its position in India's major cities, towns and villages.

Reliance Jio's 4G VoLTE cellular service has become the primary mobile data connection gateway in India, according to a report. As much as 42 per cent users have activated Jio in their 4G-enabled SIM slot of their smartphones, followed by Airtel at 17.54 per cent, Vodafone at 12.26 per cent and Idea at 11.50 per cent, according to a consumer mobile analytics app study released in January.

Reliance Jio is also leading the race in terms of smartphone data consumption in India, with per user consumption of 6.54GB of internet data on average compared with 1.28GB on Airtel, 1.29GB on Vodafone and 1.32GB on Idea.

''With free voice and 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 been forced to think out of the box to deal with competition.

Vodafone and Idea have been forced to merge and Bharti Airtel's revenue has dropped with the company reporting its lowest profit in four years. Airtel even dragged Jio to the Competition Commission of India, accusing it of 'predatory pricing', but TRAI gave Jio a clean chit.

However, bad network or lack of coverage still haunts Reliance Jio users, who say they want the company should address this first before trying to expand further.