Reliance Jio Prime Explained | All You wanted to know about Jio Prime Membership.

Mukesh Ambani- Chairman of RIL has today announced the future plans of the Reliance Jo. According to him, the Jio New Year Offer will be available only till March 31st 2017.

Mukesh Ambani assured that Reliance Jio will provide 20% more data than any other major Indian Telecom services.

Also Voice Call will be free of cost and roaming-free for life time across India to any other networks.

Mukesh Ambani introduced Jio Prime, which is a membership program exclusively for the current Reliance Jio subscribers. In this you can be a member of the Jio Prime by paying Rs.99. After that by paying Rs.303 per month, you can continue the current offer of 1GB per day for another 1 more year!

Anyone who is subscribing for Reliance Jio within  March 31st can be eligible for the Jio Prime Membership.

The enrollment for Jio Prime Membership will start on March 1st till March 31st. And the Jio Prime Membership offer will be effective from April 1st 2017.

Reliance Jio users can now transfer money instantly via JioChat

Reliance Jio users can now send money instantly from their JioChat window by integrating their JioMoney wallet with the chat, the telco displayed through a tweet posted on Monday.

The users in the midst of their conversation on the chat window can choose to tap on a rupee icon in the app which will prompt them to enter the amount they want to transfer to the other person.

The entered amount would immediately be deducted from their JioMoney wallet balance and the confirmation message will be received in the chat window itself as part of a chat bubble.

Mukesh Ambani- driven Reliance Jio tweeted a short clip from its official handle @reliancejio which explained how the new feature can be used by Jio users to transfer money to peers.

The telco has made a witty clip to explain to its users about the new feature. The feature seems to be one of its kind for now since the functionality is not available on the digital content apps driven by telcos or OTT apps such as Whatsapp.

Jio is trying to offer the most out of its digital content services by interlinking two apps and introducing unique features that could soon be trending and adopted by others.

Airtel takes Reliance Jio to CCI over 'Predatory Pricing'.

Bharti Airtel has taken its war against Reliance Jio to the next step and filed a complaint with the Competition Commission of India (CCI) accusing the Mukesh Ambani- led firm of predatory pricing, and anti-competitive behavior.

According to a report in the Financial Express, the complaint was filed on February 2. It should be noted that Airtel, Idea Cellular have already gone to the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) alleging that TRAI is favoring newcomer Jio by allowing it to continue with its free data offer. Reliance Jio has extended the free data, voice calls, SMS offer till March 31 2017, from the earlier limit of December 31. Jio had also filed a complaint with CCI in November 2016, and the body has asked its director-general (investigation) to look into the matter, adds the report.

In December 2016, Airtel moved the telecom dispute tribunal TDSAT against TRAI allowing for Reliance Jio to continue free promotional offer beyond stipulated 90 days. In its 25-page petition, Airtel had asked the quasi-judicial body to direct TRAI to ensure that Jio does not provide its free voice and data plan beyond December 3.

It alleged violation of TRAI’s tariff orders has been continuing, causing “significant prejudice and day-to-day loss” to it and “affecting its network” as it has to bear asymmetric traffic due to the free call offer by Jio.

In January 2017, it was reported that Reliance Jio has asked telecom regulator TRAI to “impose highest penalty” on Airtel, accusing the latter of grossly exaggerating the value of data in a promotional offer, and giving misleading tariff ads.

Jio alleged the advertisements issued by Airtel over the pre-paid and post-paid tariff packs of unlimited calls and free data are in “gross violation of extant telecommunication laws”. However in a statement, Airtel said, “We are not aware of any such complaint. All our tariff plans are fully compliant with the prevailing regulations.”

Relaince Jio Fiber Broadband rolls out in Mumbai.

Reliance Jio has followed Airtel V-Fiber into Mumbai with its very own broadband Internet service at the same speed as that offered by the latter. The Mukesh Ambani-led company’s fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) facility reportedly delivers up to 100Mbps in download speeds to users, and is currently being tested in several residential areas of South Mumbai.

And just like Airtel, Jio’s FTTH service will also be free for the first three months of use. The former charges an initial amount of Rs 1000 for the modem which is needed to hook up its existing broadband customers to the next generation network. After that, schemes start at Rs 899 a month. A 200GB plan at 40Mbps at comes for Rs 2599 per month.

Reliance Jio is said to be charging Rs 4500 for the router and installation fees. There’s no information on how much subscribers will have to pay after the first three months of free usage. Since Airtel’s V-Fiber tariffs begin at Rs 899, we’re sure Jio will launch its base service at a lower price.

Those who are currently availing of Reliance Jio’s newly launched broadband connection are apparently getting download speeds of 70Mbps to 100Mbps, claims India Today. The technology leveraged by the company should allow it to provide Internet browsing speeds of up to 1Gbps though.

India's Telecom Subscribers grew drastically; thanks to Reliance Jio: TRAI

India’s telecom subscriber base grew by 21.02 million to cross 1.12 billion at end-November 2016 on account of large number of additions by Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd.

“The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,102.94 million at the end of October 2016 to 1,123.96 million at the end of November 2016, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 1.91% ,” according to a report by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) released Thursday.

The mobile phone subscriber base increased 1.96% to 1,099.51 million at the end of November from 1,078.42 million in October. Reliance Jio alone added over 16.2 million in November taking its total subscriber base to 51.87 million within three months of launching its commercial 4G services.


Reliance Jio has also become leader in mobile broadband segment. Idea Cellular Ltd followed Reliance Jio with net addition of 2.52 million new customers. Bharti Airtel added 1.08 million customers, Vodafone 890,794 subscribers, BSNL 831,286, Telenor 486,786, Aircel 302,036, Reliance Communications 156,187, MTNL 3,364.

Quadrant, which has announced closure of its operation, lost 69,211 customers, Sistema Shyam 288,720 and Tata Teleservices lost over 1 million subscribers.


Out of the total wireless subscriber base (1,099.51 million), 968.83 million wireless subscribers were found active in November. After registering minute growth in about two decades, landline connection again declined marginally to 24.44 million at the end of November from 24.52 million in October.

The growth in broadband subscriber base also fell in November. The number of broadband subscribers slightly declined to 218.26 million at the end of November from 218.42 million in October.

Idea Cellular and Vodafone to consider merging to fight Reliance Jio: Reports

Shares of telecom companies surged on Monday on hopes of consolidation in the sector. Speculation is rife about a possible merger between Vodafone and Idea Cellular to survive the stiff competition after the launch of Reliance Jio.

Idea Cellular jumped 8.3%, its maximum gain since 11 months. The stock gained for the seventh consecutive session and rose 26% in this period. Rivals Bharti Airtel jumped 4.6%, its biggest gain since 28 November, while Reliance Communications Ltd rose 5%.

The telecom industry in India is already reduced to a four players’ game -- Reliance Jio being the new one, and Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea as the incumbents. Marginal players such as Reliance Communications, Aircel and Telenor are already looking at probable consolidation.

Hindustan Times reported earlier that Telenor is in advanced discussions with Idea. Aircel and Reliance Communications have already decided on a merger. However, a recent ruling from the Supreme Court against Aircel promoters might become a roadblock.

The Vodafone source also said, “the telecom industry is in high debt, and there is almost no space to add more debt.”

The combined debt of all telecom operators put together is already Rs 3,85,000 crore. The companies are also spending millions of dollars in 4G rollouts, forget the money that has to be pumped in, once a pricing war starts between the telcos.

Even as the last word on the pricing war in India’s telecom space is yet to be heard, JP Morgan in an analysis said that the 4G offering by the latest player Reliance Jio is gaining traction and will see its subscriber base double by the end of this financial year.

Mukesh Ambani is out to conquer his competitors. Reliance Jio, Ambani’s telecom venture is up against incumbent rivals such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular.

Ambani is India’s richest man, and his bets are big -- be it petrochemicals, retail or hydrocarbons -- and telecom is not different. He wants to change the way India uses the internet, by offering high-speed internet services at ultra low cost.

For that, he has already invested Rs 1,71,000 crore (almost $25 billion) into the telecom venture to build India’s first fourth-generation (4G) only telecom infrastructure to provide high-speed internet. On Monday, he announced that Rel Jio will raise another Rs 30,000 crore through a right issue, which the company will use to lay additional optical fiber cable (OFC) and expand existing network.

The Indian telecom industry has already gone through two rounds of price wars -- the first one was when Reliance Communications in 2002 launched Monsoon Hungama and gave mobile connections with handsets at Rs 500. The second one was in 2009 when Tata Docomo started a mega price war with the one-paisa-per-second tariff.

Reliance Jio reportadly working on DTH service: Leaked Image

Reliance Jio reportedly working on introducing its own Direct-to-Home (DTH) services in the coming months. Now, we have the first clue about how the purported Reliance Jio set-top box and its remote controller would look like, thanks to a pair of leaked images.Shaped like a curved cylinder and featuring a glossy black texture, the design of the Jio DTH device is in great contrast to the existing set top boxes which carry a rather regular box-shaped design. The unusually designed set-top box is likely to be connected to Jio Fiber or the dish, GizmoTimes reports. Jio Fiber is the company’s fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service that is claimed to offer broadband speeds of up to 1Gbps.

Based on the leaked images, the rumored device comes with a number of ports. There is a S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface Format) port, an Ethernet

Additionally, the set-top box is accompanied by a remote control which looks like a standard controller but has interesting features. The remote control features a button for mic option, which means it could come with voice recognition capabilities. There is also a button for ‘Jio’ which essentially suggests that there will be some integration of Reliance’s Jio content services along with the set-top box.
port, an HDMI port, along with a USB port. If the image is to be believed, the set-top box will then allow one to directly plug in their broadband cable for internet-based viewing of shows or use an external drive to watch content on a screen channeled through the set top box.

Reliance Jio Call Drop to Other Networks: Complete List Since January 1, 2017

 Here's the complete list of all the call drop from Reliance Jio to other major networks.

Facebook shows huge Q4 growth: Thanks to Reliance Jio

The unlimited free data by Reliance Jio Infocomm has helped in contributing to Facebook 's strong fourth quarter numbers as India was the social media giant's "strongest growth market” by user base.

The US Company posted fourth quarter revenue of $8.81 billion, which includes $1.35 billion from the Asia region, sharply higher than the $5.84 billion it posted a year ago. Net Profit for the quarter to December came in at $3.57 billion, more than double the $1.56 billion it posted a year back.

Facebook CFO David Wehner, while referring to Reliance Jio’s free data plans, said that the company's growth in Asia was boosted by the free data being offered in India.

"In the fourth quarter, we wanted to call out that we have seen an increase in third-party promotional free data plans in places like India,” Wehner said. Jio's free services, on offer till March 31, have also forced incumbent telcos to slash data prices as well.

"So that (free offer) clearly is having an impact in APAC (Asia-Pacific) and India was our strongest growth market (by user base). So, that would be something that I would say was a little bit more unique this past quarter,” Wehner said.

The second biggest beneficiary according to Smartapp, are video apps such as YouTube , Hotstar , Amazon Prime and Netflix , which together have seen a jump of 336%. The social Internet giant is also expected to ramp-up hiring and is likely to invest more in video content, the company said.

Reliance Jio helped us a lot to grow in India: Facebook

Promotional free data plans by telecom service providers in India has helped social networking giant Facebook clock strong growth. Terming India as its "strongest growth market" in the fourth quarter, Facebook said third-party promotional free data plans in geographies like India were "clearly having an impact in Asia Pacific".

Last year in September, Mukesh Ambani- led Reliance Jio announced free data and voice services for its customers. "Customers should pay for only one service, either voice or data. Jio will put an end to voice call charges in India. No Jio customer will ever have to pay for voice calls again," Mukesh Ambani said while launching Jio in September.

Jio's free data offer put massive pressure to bring down data prices on the other telecom service providers. To counter the Jio offers, other telecom providers like Airtel, Vodafone and Idea too slashed their data charges. This price war for data services translated into more data consumption which helped Facebook grow.

According to its Q4 report, the US-based company saw its revenues growing by 51 per cent to USD 8.8 billion in the December quarter of 2016.

"... particularly in the fourth quarter wanted to call out that we've seen an increase in third party promotional free data plans in places like India. So that clearly is having an impact in Asia Pacific and India was our strongest growth market. So that would be something that I would say was a little bit more unique this past quarter," Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Wehner said.

Facebook has nearly 1.9 billion users with more than 1.2 billion logging onto its platform every day. Of these, 1.1 billion used their mobile devices to access Facebook on a daily basis. India accounts for over 160 million users, the second highest after Facebook's home ground. During the December quarter, mobile advertising revenue grew 53 per cent to USD 8.6 billion, representing about 84 per cent of the quarter's revenue.

BSNL now offering 1GB data at Rs.36 to counter Reliance Jio

To counter threat from Reliance Jio, state-run telecom firm BSNL on Friday slashed 3G mobile Internet rates by about three-fourths, bringing down the cost of per GB data to as low as Rs 36 under a special pack.

"Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has decided to offer up to four times extra data on existing data STVs (special tariff vouchers) available in the market," BSNL said in a statement.

Under Rs. 291 plan, a customer will get four times more data at 8GB with a validity of 28 days against 2GB earlier. The Rs. 78 plan will offer double data at 2GB.

"With these offers BSNL is now offering data at the rate of Rs. 36 per GB which is one of the lowest in the Industry," BSNL said.

Reliance Jio is offering free 4G service till March 31, 2017, under which its all mobile customers are getting 1 GB of 4G mobile broadband everyday and after consumption of 1GB, the speed gets reduced.

Other private operators have brought down the cost of per GB data to as low as Rs. 50.

"We are committed to providing affordable mobile services for all segments of the prepaid mobile customers. These offers will be valid from February 6, 2017, on Pan India basis," BSNL Board Director for Consumer Mobility RK Mittal said.

Jio has become largest broadband service provider in the country within three months of its commercial launch. It has 52.23 million broadband customers.

BSNL continues to dominate broadband market in fixed line services segment with 9.95 million customers and ranks fifth in mobile broadband space with 20.39 million subscribers.

Source: NDTV

Reliance Jio and Demonatization led to huge loss: Vodafone India

Vodafone Group Plc on Thursday said competitive pressures in India with free services offered by new entrant Reliance Jio and the impact of demonetization on prepaid top-ups led to a nearly 2% drop in its service revenue from the country.

The company also confirmed merger talks with the Aditya Birla Group’s Idea Cellular as part of its third-quarter results for the period that ended on 31 December 2016.

“Our strong organic performance in South Africa and Turkey was partially offset by India, where the sector is affected by free services from the new entrant,” Vodafone Group chief executive Vittorio Colao said in a statement.

“We anticipate intense competitive pressure in India in the fourth quarter and are taking a series of commercial actions, including the extension of 4G services to 17 leading circles. As announced earlier this week, we have also entered discussions with the Aditya Birla Group about an all-share merger of Vodafone India and Idea,” he added.

In India, the service revenue for the firm declined by 1.9%, which it said was “driven by heightened competitive pressure following free services offered by the new entrant and the adverse impact of demonetization on prepaid top-up volumes during the quarter”. “We increased our overall customer base and continued to retain our high value customers, but saw increasing pressure on both prices and customer usage,” Vodafone said.

The London-headquartered telecom giant also reported a decrease in revenues in its home market of the UK, also as a result of price competition.

“In the UK we have made good progress in improving customer service but face heightened price competition in enterprise,” Colao said. “Our overall performance in Europe and Africa remained strong during the third quarter, reflecting good execution. In Europe, service revenue growth continued, led by Italy, Germany and Spain,” he said.

“Mobile contract ARPU continued to stabilize, reflecting the successful adoption of our ‘more-for-more’ propositions, while we remain Europe’s fastest growing broadband company, illustrating our effective convergence strategy. We are reconfirming our guidance for the year and are confident that we will sustain our commercial momentum,” he added.

The group’s total revenue was €13.7 billion and group service revenue was €12.3 billion. The total revenue declined 3.9%, including a 4 percentage point negative impact from foreign exchange rate movements

Reliance Jio beats Airtel and Vodafone with 94% Data Traffic share in India.

After reports of Reliance Jio becoming the primary data connection on mobiles in India, a new survey report suggests that Jio has the highest data traffic share in India surpassing the telcos like Airtel and Vodafone.


According to a report by Credit Suisse, Jio has 94 per cent traffic share while Airtel, Vodafone and Idea contribute 2 per cent each to the traffic. A survey was conducted in 30 cities which revealed that Jio had better 4G coverage in 80 per cent of cities with at least 30 per cent coverage presence in almost every city. Airtel, Vodafone and Idea had coverage in 10 to 30 per cent of the cities.

Reliance Jio has become the  primary data connection on most of the mobile devices in India. According to a consumer mobile analysis app, the company has  nearly 42 per cent users  who have activated Jio in their 4G-enabled slot. Airtel takes the second spot with 17.54 per cent, Vodafone at 12.26 per cent while Idea takes the last spot amidst the four telcos with 11.50 per cent 4G activation.


Reliance Jio is also leading in data consumption with a Jio user logging 6.54GB on average compared to 1.28GB on Airtel, 1.29GB on Vodafone and 1.32GB on Idea. This report suggests that this is due to the Welcome offer of Jio that offered unlimited data to its subscribers till March 31 this year. The report found that lowered costs being the driving factor, mobile data consumption in metros has increased by almost 6GB and non-metro by almost 5GB over the last few months. The use of social networking platforms such as Facebook and video-streaming apps like YouTube are the primary drivers of usage and large-scale adoption of mobile internet across India.

Source: India Today

Reliance Jio offers Best Coverage and Airtel Offers Best Speed: Credit Suisse

Reliance Jio is touted to be the fastest growing telecom operator in the world, and credit for that expansion will arguably go to its introductory free offer. Now, a new report from Credit Suisse claims that while Reliance Jio enjoys the most amount of network coverage, its 4G speed trails behind its competitor Airtel.

According to a report released by financial services company Credit Suisse, Airtel 4G offers the best 4G speeds among the other competitors in India. The download speed of Airtel is at 12Mbps; while Reliance Jio, Vodafone, and Idea all come a close second with 7-8Mbps download speeds.

"Our conclusion is that Reliance Jio's network coverage is significantly ahead of the other operators. Reliance Jio has good coverage in 80 percent plus of cities surveyed, compared to less than 30 percent for the others. The difference is even more stark when compared only with 4G networks of incumbents (sub-15 percent of cities)," the report said.

The report claimed that the slow speeds on Reliance Jio was probably due to the load on its servers. Reliance Jio reportedly carries 90 percent plus of all data traffic in the country currently while its network capacity share is closer to 35 percent only.

"We have already started seeing the impact of Jio on the incumbents' numbers (Bharti 3Q). Our study here shows Jio has built a significant lead in terms of network coverage, and the incumbents have a fair amount of catch up to do (especially on 4G). Importantly, going by recently announced enhanced capex plans, the company continues to invest. Overall, we continue to see significant pressure on fundamentals in coming quarters from Jio," it said.

The report is based on the study of over 30 Indian cities that represent a "significant chunk of current data demand and revenues." Reliance Jio's free introductory offer was extended till March 31, and even after the offer ends, the plan prices are much lesser than its competition. Companies like Airtel, Vodafone, and Idea have been hit hard by Reliance Jio's entry, and Airtel even recorded its lowest profits in four years. Telecom operators have been launching lucrative offers to combat the Reliance Jio effect as well, case in point being Vodafone which recently launched its Vodafone RED plans with unlimited calling.

Source: NDTV