Reliance Jio announces lowest rental plan of Rs 49 for JioPhone users

Reliance Jio on Thursday announced its lowest rental plan of Rs 49 with the validity of 28 days for the JioPhone users. The latest plan marks Reliance Jio's shift in strategy to provide cheaper plans for the feature phone users. From January 26, JioPhone customers could avail unlimited voice and data benefit on the recharge of Rs 49 for around a month.

The launch of the cheaper rental plan follows Reliance Jio's positive quarterly results released on January 19. The Mukesh Ambani-led telco, which started tariff war in country by offering data at extremely affordable prices, earned a net profit of Rs 504 crore in just 16 months of the launch.

In a statement, the company said unlike the Jio's smartphone users, who enjoy free voice and high speed data at best price, tariffs for JioPhone users were high. "Tariffs charged for feature phone users continue to be exorbitant, while their smartphone counterparts on Jio enjoyed free voice calls and high speed data at the most affordable tariffs. The high feature phone tariffs make it impossible for them to even think of using data...Jio has made data affordable for everyone," the statement said.

"JioPhone users will enjoy free voice calls and unlimited data (1GB at high speed) for 28 days at a price of only Rs. 49. Jio is also introducing affordable data add-ons at Rs. 11, 21, 51 and 101," the company added.

Reliance Jio has announced plan revisions under its Republic Day offer where it will double the validity of the Rs 98 plan from 14 days to 28 days. The users will get 2GB 4G data for the period of validity, instead of the 150MB daily limit that the pack offers presently.

Moreover, the telco has also decided to extend daily data usage of its users who have subscribed to 1GB and 1.5GB per day data packs by 500MB, increasing them to 1.5GB and 2GB respectively. These tariff changes too are part of the Republic Day offer and will come into effect from January 26.

With the latest tariff cut move, mobile data rates will further fall to as low as Rs. 2.7 per GB, a report by Bank of America Merrill Lynch said.

Jio's closest rival Bharti Airtel data cost per GB has dropped to Rs. 4 under its new schemes. The tariff of Rs. 2.7 per GB data is about 99 per cent lower compared to Rs. 249-259 per GB charged by established big operators till August 2016 -- before commercial launch of Jio services.

(With inputs from PTI)