RJio extends free Jio Prime Membership by another three months

Reliance Jio has extended the Jio Prime migration plan from free to paid services for its prime customers to 15 April, in a new offer called `Summer Surprise'.

Under the extended Jo Prime `Summer Surprise' offer, customers will get services on a complementary basis for the first three months. The paid tariff plan will be applied only in July, after the expiry of the complementary service.

"The Jio Summer Surprise' is the first if many surprises for Jio Prime members,' chairman Mukesh Ambani stated in a Jio Infocomm release.

Reliance Jio also claimed to have signed up over 72 million of its 100 million customers to the privileged customer programme in just one month.

Jio has now extended the deadline for purchasing its Rs303 and other plans from 31March to 15 April and extended a `Summer Surprise' of continued free service to all its Jio Prime customers.

Reliance Jio announced its Prime membership scheme and multiple postpaid and prepaid packs, after its initial Welcome and Happy New Year offers. Jio initially offered free 4G data with FUP of 4GB per day, unlimited SMS messages and 4G VoLTE calls. After December 31, 2016, the FUP was reduced to 1GB per day, following which competing telecom operator Bharti Airtel raised appeals to the TD-SAT accusing the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India of not regulating Jio's continuing free services.

Jio eventually declared its prime membership plans that will need existing users to pay a one-time registration fee of Rs99, and subsequently recharge or subscribe to postpaid plans that begins at Rs19 for prepaid customers and Rs303 for postpaid customers.

Following Jio's Prime offers, other telecom firms such as Airtel, Vodafone and Idea had announced similarly priced 'unlimited' plans to rival Jio. The latest deadline extension will come as another blow to these telcos already constrained by Jio's free data plans

Reports suggest that Reliance Jio has garnered nearly 120 million users since its launch on 5 September 2016, and now over 72 million of them have migrated to its paid prime membership plan.

Mukesh Ambani stated that those who fail to subscribe to the Jio Prime membership may face degraded services, or even face discontinuation of their free connection.