Reliance Jio announced Thursday that it would return to making free off-network domestic voice calls on its network starting January 1, 2021. The operator will restart its previous practice more than a year after it began charging its subscribers 6 paise per minute to make voice calls to other mobile networks. The new decision came as a result of the ‘Bill and Keep’ regime that the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is implementing in the country as of January 1 and that will end with the charges for interconnection use (IUC) for all national voice calls.
With the update, Jio subscribers will be able to make free voice calls to any mobile network in the country, just like other telecommunications companies. This is likely to make competition more difficult for other telcos, including Airtel and Vi (formerly Vodafone Idea), as Jio will be able to offer more competitive recharge plans. Other operators will also not receive any charges from Jio for terminating voice calls on their network.
In September 2019, TRAI extended the timeline to implement the Bill and Keep regime beyond January 1, 2020. That extension resulted in the arrival of the six-country outbound call charge at Jio for other mobile networks in October last year. .
At the time, Jio claimed that because he supported IUC, which operators had to pay to enable off-network voice calls on their networks, he had paid almost Rs. Rs 13,500 crore to other operators in the past three years. He also mentioned that after interconnection charges came into effect in 2017, other telcos continued to charge “exorbitant fees” and increased their rates for voice calls to around Rs. 1.50 per minute.
However, unlike Jio, other operators favored IUC as it emerged as one of their main sources of income. A large number of Jio users also criticized the telecommunications company’s decision to start charging for voice calls. It tried to end some criticism by releasing specific IUC coupons following the announcement of off-network voice call charges on its network last year.
It is important to note that while Jio began charging users for making voice calls to other networks, it continued to offer free voice calls from Jio to Jio, thanks to the support of VoIP on its network.
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