Reliance Jio found itself in hot waters when it made the biggest change to its prepaid plans by introducing 6-paise per minute charge on interconnect calls. This move gave rivals the ultimate chance to shine in the glory, which had been focused on Jio for about three years. In order to counter some backlash, Jio introduced 30-minute free talk time for two days, but it came with a catch.
Reliance Jio is continuing its damage control efforts and this time it has introduced four new prepaid plans with hopes to calm agitated customers. Reliance Jio's All-in-One plans are available for all prepaid users pan-India. The biggest advantage of these plans is the 1,000 minutes of free calls to non-Jio numbers.
Reliance Jio's All-in-One plans start at Rs 222 for 28 days validity, Rs 333 for 56 days validity and Rs 444 for 84 days validity. All these plans have all the same benefits, including free Jio-to-Jio calls, 2GB data per day, 100 SMS per day and access to Jio's complimentary subscription to its app suite.
In case your calling limit is higher, you can choose the fourth prepaid plan under the All-in-One category. At Rs 555, consumers get 3,000 free calling minutes to non-Jio numbers.
With simple math, the new Jio plans appear to be more beneficial to the end-users than the current plans. For instance, customers are getting 1,000 minutes of free calls to non-Jio network, which would cost Rs 80 and extra GBs of data at just Re 1 per GB, as compared to the existing Rs 399 (3-month) plan.
As it appears, Jio still wants to offer more value to customers than rivals. For comparison sake, Airtel's Rs 249 prepaid plan gives customers unlimited local + STD calls along with 2GB data per day for 28 days. But the biggest advantage Airtel has is the unlimited calls to any network, unlike Jio, which is only giving limited free minutes to non-Jio network post which calls are charged at 6 paise. Vodafone has a similar plan for Rs 229, where it offers unlimited calls and 2GB data per day for 28 days.
Clearly, the calling advantage on rival networks is better than on Jio. But the data is still cheaper on Jio's network. So it's your usage that will define your plans.
