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Indian telco likely to rankle rivals with ongoing network ‘tests’.
Reliance Jio will continue to be a thorn in the side of its more established rivals for the foreseeable future, after the Indian operator on Thursday revealed it will continue to offer free calls and cheap data for the rest of this year.
Reuters reports that Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Jio parent Reliance Industries, told shareholders at the conglomerate’s annual meeting that the company is still carrying out network tests; he did not disclose an exact date for when Jio will begin offering commercial 4G services.
The news sent the share prices of Indian operators tumbling, according to various local news outlets.
Jio "is future-ready, and can easily be upgraded to support even more data as technologies advance," said Ambani, in the report. "We’ll be able to provide an abundance of high-quality high-speed data and transform India from a high-priced data market to one with the lowest data rates anywhere in the world.
His comments are likely to rile India’s major mobile operators, who recently accused Reliance Jio of masquerading fully-fledged commercial services under the guise of a trial, and said that its free calls offer is flooding their networks with outbound voice traffic.
According to Reuters, when Jio does eventually begin commercial operations, it will offer free calls to other networks and charge data at approximately one fifth the prevailing cost per gigabyte in India.
Reliance Jio has been offering limited services to employees and select customers since late 2015, and throughout this year has gradually extended the trial’s scope and scale. Officially, Reliance maintains that it plans to launch commercial 4G services at some point in fiscal 2016-2017, which began in April.
