Reliance Jio may extend its free offer till March 2017

It was reported that Reliance Jio will end its Welcome Offer on Dec 3 after TRAI’s instructions. And that is still true. Its Welcome Offer is still going to end this December 3 but reports say that Reliance may figure out some way there is also a chance that Reliance may figure out some way to extend their free offer if they feel like it’s essential for the market situation demands.

A new report said that Reliance Jio has informed analysts that there is a chance it may extend free data and voice calls services till March 2017.

In a note, Motilal Oswal analysts said, “Mass scale free welcome offer could continue until March 2017 to attract subscriber growth towards the celebrated 100 million mark with RJio's indicative data pricing at Rs130-140 per GB,”

TRAI says that a telecom operator cannot offer a plan with free services for more than 90 days, which is why Reliance Jio’s Welcome offer has to end and will end on Dec 3. But then, there is no restriction on the number of promotional offers a company can launch according to what Reliance Industries’ management has told analysts at Citi Research.

Anshuman Thakur, the head of strategy and planning of Reliance Jio, shared that they have told the TRAI and the government that customers on their network are facing issues regarding the quality of service due to interconnection congestion. So the customers have not been able to enjoy the services fully. Reliance Jio is not in a position to deliver the quality of service that the Jio management has planned and therefore, it would be unfair to charge customers.

If the issue regarding interconnection is not solved, Reliance Jio may come up with an innovative plan so that the customers won’t have to pay for their services until the quality of service improves.

Reliance Jio might give another name to the offer to avoid the conflict with TRAI's guidelines and continue to offer free data and voice call services to its customers. This way it would stick to TRAI’s guidelines by not offering the same promotional plan for more than 90 days.