Jio Retracts Free Calling

In an unexpected decision, Reliance Jio mobile services are no longer completely free as the company will now charge 6 paise/ minute from its customers for outgoing calls to other network operators to recover the Interconnect Usage Charges (IUC).

- Vivek Singh Chauhan

Claiming to give free calling services, Mukesh Ambaniled Reliance Jio Infocomm entered the telecom industry on December 27, 2015, with a beta for partners and employees and became publicly available on September 5, 2016. In no time, it disrupted the telecom industry and ended the year with 6.4 per cent market share, as per data by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). As of August 31, 2019, it is the largest mobile network operator inS India and the third-largest mobile network operator in the world with over 348.25 million subscribers.

Reliance Jio became the nation’s top telecom operator after free calls andcheap data lured millions of users and left rivals struggling under mounting debt. At the time of its launch, it had announced that all voice calls will be given for free along with affordable data rates.

But, we all now know that Reliance Jio has broken its promise and by making outgoing calls to other mobile operators no longer free.

What’s the controversy?

In an unexpected decision, the companyhas announced that the calls are not completely free and it would charge 6 paise/minute from its customers for outgoing calls to other network operators to recover the Interconnect Usage Charges (IUC) -- the cost paid by one mobile telecom operator to another when its customers make outgoing mobile calls to the other operator’s customers.

Reliance Jio, in a statement, said that since voice calls on Jio network are free, highly charged 35-40 crore 2G users of rival networks end up giving missed calls to its users to trigger callbacks that have resulted in a payout of Rs 13,500 crore to Bharti Airtel and vodafone Idea in last three years. So, to recover the losses created by the TRAI move, the company has decided to charge customers for every call they make to a rival’s network.