Jio restricting free voice calls to 30 minutes: reports
12 Nov 2016
Even as call failures on Reliance Jio's network have come down to around 28 per cent with Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular releasing additional points of interconnection (PoIs), the Mukesh Ambvani-led telco has started limiting free voice calls to just 30 minutes per call, according to a Maktechblog report.
BGR India has also reported that a number of Jio users have complained about voice calls being cut at exactly the 30-minute mark.
Reliance Jio kicked off commercial operations on 5 September with the launch of its ''Welcome Offer'', which comes with free unlimited calls and 4GB data per day till 31 December 2016. Besides, the telco is also offering free access to its digital app ecosystem.
Reliance Jio's website or app doesn't mention the 30 minute cut-off time for voice calls anywhere.
BGR said that the move could be a measure to reduce the congestion on the networks.
Jio has been claiming that the congestion is a result of inadequate interconnection capacity from India's top telecom operators.
The PoIs have been a point of contention between Jio and the incumbent telcos, with the new entrant accusing the existing players of not providing adequate PoIs and acting in an anti-competitive manner. Jio's rivals have maintained that they have released more than enough PoIs and well in time, and blamed shortfalls in Jio's network due to which released PoIs aren't being operationalized.
The latest data available on Jio's website updated on Thursday said that roughly 8.5 crore out of about 30 crore call attempts by Jio's users to the three operators failed on 7 November, with around 50-60 per cent call failure rates earlier this month.
About 34 per cent of the 13.81 crore call attempts made to Airtel from Jio failed, according to data. The failure rate on the Vodafone network stood at 26.7 per cent out of 8.79 crore calls, while Idea's network had the lowest call failure rate at 18.9 per cent out of 7.48 crore calls.
