Reliance Jio Might Extend the Jio Welcome Offer with Unlimited Usage till March 2017

At the time of Jio 4G announcement, Mukesh Ambani announced the Jio Welcome Offer (JWO) for all the Indians starting from September 5th. He also mentioned that the JWO enables every Indian to test the Jio digital life which includes voice calls, 4G internet, SMS, and Jio suite of apps for free. The free data, voice calls, and SMS will end on December 31st, 2016 and the Jio suite of apps will be free until December 31st, 2017. The Jio Welcome Offer is trimmed down version of the initial Jio Preview Offer (JPO). Though everything remains same, the true unlimited 4G data on JPO is limited to just 4GB/day on JWO. After the 4GB limit, the speeds will be limited to just 128Kbps.

Now the latest reports suggest the JWO to be extended till March 2017. According to TRAI guidelines, any network provider cannot continue any offer for more than 90 days. Based on this new rule, Reliance Jio also confirmed that the new Jio 4G SIMs enabled with JWO will not be issued after December 3rd, though the earlier issued SIMs will enjoy the promised benefits till this year end. The extension of the JWO validity will depend on the interconnection points for Jio. As of now, most of the Jio 4G users are experiencing the call drops as there are no required interconnection points issued by the other networks.

TRAI is also looking to impose a whopping Rs. 3,500 crore fine on Airtel, Vodafone, and Idea as they denied to provide the interconnection points. Reliance Jio doesn’t want to charge the users until the interconnection problem is resolved. Since there is 90 days rule for any offer, we might see the same unlimited offer with a new name. While transferring from JPO to JWO, the company has limited the internet usage at full speed only until 4GB/day, and we hope there will be no more additional limitations with the new offer. We can only expect the confirmation of this offer in the month of December. With this additional three months extension, the company also want to achieve the 100 million subscribers mark.

However, the new Jio 4G SIMs which are brought are only used as secondary SIM while the users are actually continuing with the earlier network. Though there might be a drop in the data usage on other SIM, I personally dropped my postpaid plan from Airtel’s MyPlan 599 to MyPlan 199; the income over the voice calls might not see a significant drop. While the company is expecting to reach 100 million by March 2017, still the service has to be improved a lot. The user is unable to generate the barcode code on their device; even though there is a bar code, the voice calls on the SIM will not be activated anytime soon. Their customer care numbers can’t be reached which make the things even worse for the Jio users.

If you are facing any issue with the Jio SIM, share with us by commenting below.

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