Jio announces new recharge plans increasing the price

Reliance Jio on Friday announced new recharge plans – offering built-in IUC calling time — for its mobile phone customers on its 4G network.
Jio for VoLTE service
The latest mobile recharging plans are available at Rs 75, Rs 125, Rs 155 and Rs 185 — with validity for 28 days. The new wireless plans will offer free IUC minutes and extra data to its 300 million plus 4G subscribers.

Reliance Jio’s existing recharge plans include Rs 49, Rs 99, Rs 153 with a validity of 28 days and Rs 297 with a validity of 84 days. The existing plans forced customers to buy top-up IUC vouchers with older plans.

Jio’s 4G feature phone has lost the top position in the Indian feature phone market to Korea’s Samsung during the July-September quarter of 2019. JioPhone’s share in the quarter fell to 4 percent. Jio has sold around 70 million units of 4G feature phones since its launch in August 2017.

Samsung has 22 percent market share in the feature phone segment in India, followed by Itel and Lava (16 percent each), Nokia (12 percent) and Karbonn (7 percent).

Jio earlier this week announced four new tariff plans. These plans are in the range of Rs 222, Rs 333 — valid for 28 days, Rs 444 valid for 56 days and Rs 555 valid for 84 days. Jio has added the cost of 6 paise per minute for calls made to other networks into the bundled plans – putting pressure on consumers.

Jio said the new tariff plans come with 500 minutes of free offnet termination charge minutes, while the existing plans force customers to buy separate top-ups. These plans offer 3 GB, 14 GB, 28 GB and 56 GB per month.

The Rs 65 plan of competition offers 233 minutes and 200 MB of monthly data while Jio’s Rs 75 plan is offering 500 offnet minutes along with 3GB data. Rival plan for Rs 245 enables consumer to get 816 minutes and 2 GB of monthly data, while Jio is offering 56 GB data and 500 offenet minutes at Rs 185.