Jio to start 4G services from tomorrow

NEW DELHI: Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (RJIL) said that it would start 4G services from coming  Monday (September 5).

"Jio has intimated the Department of Telecommunications (“DOT”), Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (“TRAI”) and the security agencies regarding the commencement of its wireless telecommunication services in all 22 service areas from 5 September 2016," the company said in a statement.

The company has also filed the tariff plans for wireless services with TRAI. With these steps, the Company has fulfilled all the requirements of Unified License for commencement of services.

Jio’s tariff plans transparently convey that all subscribers under the ‘Jio Welcome Offer’ will be entitled to certain special benefits. These benefits comprise of access to unlimited LTE data and national voice, video and messaging services, including national roaming, along with the full bouquet of Jio applications and content, completely free up to 31 December 2016.

"Jio Welcome Offer has been designed to ensure that (i) every Indian enjoys Jio Digital Life and do Datagiri; (ii) users get to experience and gets comfortable with Jio’s digital services; (iii) users personalise Jio’s offerings in a manner that best fits his usage; (iv) Jio gets to test and stabilise its interconnect with other operators and to ensure superior voice quality for calls to other networks; and (v) Jio and Jio customers get to co-create and build the best network experience together," the statement said.

Jio Welcome Offer is available up to 31 December 2016 and we encourage every Indian to join the network as early as possible.

Further, we are grateful to the existing test users of the Company for partnering with us during the trial phase. We would now transition all the test users to the Jio Welcome Offer and they will enjoy all the benefits of Jio Welcome Offer up to 31 December 2016.

Jio has announced that domestic voice calls to any network across the country would be always free for Jio subscribers. Considering certain misinformation propagated in the media, the Company reiterates that domestic voice calls to any network across the country, both in local as well as while roaming nationally, will be completely free for Jio subscribers forever i.e. even beyond 1 January 2017 - the data used for the voice calls will also neither be charged nor deducted from the data balance of the subscriber.

"Jio looks forward to co-operation and working together with the industry to achieve the vision of Digital India. We appreciate the announcements made by the incumbent operators welcoming us to the industry and assuring that they will fulfil all their regulatory obligations. We expect the incumbent operators to fulfil their regulatory obligations in letter and spirit," it said.

Currently, Jio test users are facing huge interconnect and MNP issues. Incumbent operators have maintained that once Jio intimates DOT and TRAI of its commencement of services in accordance with the License conditions, they would provide adequate inter-connection facility to Jio as per Jio’s requirements and Mobile Number Portability facility.

"We expect and hope that following commencement of services by Jio, the incumbent operators would fulfil their obligations to provide adequate interconnection and MNP facility. In the spirit of putting the customer-first and complete transparency, Jio would report its operator-wise call failure numbers on its website ‘www.jio.com’, on a regular basis," the company said.