Mukesh Ambani woos 300 million 2G users in India⁠ with JioPhone’s offer of unlimited calls and data

• Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio recently lost its title of India’s largest telecom player to Airtel.
• Ambani has brought back the JioPhone, which it had initially launched in 2017.
• Jio is back with its offers of unlimited calls and unlimited data for two years, if you buy a JioPhone for ₹1,999.

Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio, which recently lost its title of India’s largest telecom player to Airtel, wants the position back. Jio is back with its offers of unlimited calls and unlimited data for two years, if you buy a JioPhone for ₹1,999.

Ambani must be hoping that JioPhone will help Reliance bring back its market share, which has been on a decline in the last few months. Meanwhile, Bharti Airtel continued to deliver strong growth in new subscriber acquisition, adding 5.5 million new subscribers in December 2020, as compared to 3.2 million additions by Reliance Jio.

In terms of active subscriber market share, Airtel is now the top telco with a share of 33.7%, while Jio comes in second with a 33.6% share and Vodafone Idea is a distant third with a 26.3% share.

Ambani has brought back the JioPhone, which it had initially launched in 2017. During Reliance’s last annual general meeting in July 2020, Ambani had announced Jio’s partnership with technology giant Qualcomm for building new smartphones, an initiative where Jio’s investor Google was also set to be a part of.

However, this announcement of the JioPhone had no details, whether it is born from the Qualcomm-Google partnership or not.

“There are still 300 million subscribers in India who remain ‘trapped’ in the 2G era, unable to access basic features of the internet, at a time, when the world stands at the cusp of a 5G revolution. Since the last 4 years Jio has democratised the internet and passed on the benefits of technology to every Indian. Technology no longer remains a privilege of a select few,” said Akash Ambani, Director, Reliance Jio, in a statement on Friday.

Here are the plans announced by Jio

	₹1999	₹1499	₹749
New Jio user	Unlimited Voice calls, unlimited data (2 GB per month). No recharge needed for two years.
New Jio user		Unlimited voice calls, unlimited data (2 GB per month). No recharge needed for one year.
Existing Jio users			Unlimited voice calls Unlimited data (2 GB data every month) No recharge needed for 1 year

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