Years after Jio started its telecom service promising free voice calls forever; it has changed its stance and has announced a charge for voice calls made to other networks.
Of course, Jio blames this on policy inconsistency on part of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and the heavy Interconnect Usage Charge (IUC) it needs to pay, but we will save that for later. We will do the first thing first and explain how it is going to affect you.
How much will this cost?
According to the announcements made by the company across various mediums including its website, official YouTube channel, press brief and My Jio app, the company will charge 6 paisa per minute for outgoing calls to other cellular networks.
When will it roll out?
The new tariff comes into force starting October 9, 2019 for all new recharges done from this day. That said, if a Jio user has validity left on his current recharge plan, he won’t have to pay the extra 6p/min until the validity of his current plan expires.
What is the validity of IUC top-up vouchers?
Jio users will only need to do the recharge in form of top-ups that don’t have any validity on them. It will last till the minutes are exhausted. For example, a top-up of Rs 10 will entitle a user 124 minutes of outgoing calls to non-Jio numbers. The top up will last until all 124 minutes are exhausted. It must be remembered that Jio rounds off each call at its nearest minute. The combined usage time of all these calls should be 124 minutes for the top up to expire.
But Jio promised free calls forever!
To keep its promise of lowest prices and free calls, Jio has twisted the top-up plans. The company says, it will compensate the users by providing them with extra data for the top-up amount they spend. In effect, the customers don’t pay anything extra since they get data for the amount they spend on IUC top-up recharge – well, at least, that’s how Jio’s reasoning goes.
What are the top-ups available?
Here is what you need to spend for these IUC top-ups and what those top-ups will get you.
Rs 10 IUC top-up will offer 124 minutes of outgoing calls to non-Jio numbers and 1GB data.
Rs 20 IUC top-up will offer 249 minutes of outgoing calls to non-Jio numbers and 2GB data.
Rs 50 IUC top-up will offer 656 minutes of outgoing calls to non-Jio numbers and 5GB data.
Rs 100 IUC top-up will offer 1,362 minutes of outgoing calls to non-Jio numbers and 10GB data.
Will all my outgoing calls be charged?
No. There is no 6 paise per minute charge on: all Jio to Jio calls, all incoming calls, Jio to landline calls and calls made using WhatsApp, FaceTime and similar apps.
How about postpaid users?
The news charges will also be applicable to postpaid users. They will be billed accordingly.
How long do we have to pay this?
Jio says, the new tariff will stay in place as long as TRAI doesn’t waive off IUC charge. As things stand, TRAI is supposed to end the tariff January 1, 2020. Jio says, its consumers can continue to enjoy the additional data entitlement in lieu of the IUC top-up vouchers so that there is no effective tariff increase till December 31, 2019. It indicates that the company might review its position and tariff plans should the IUC charges stay in place.
What is this IUC charge and what just changed!
After all these mentions of IUC, many of you must have been wondering what this IUC is! We will make that simple for you too. IUC is the money a telecom operator has to pay to another if a customer makes an outgoing call to a customer of the other telecom service provider. The fee currently stands at 6 paise per minute as decided by TRAI and agreed by all the operators.
Jio says while other operators charge their customers for calls, Jio offers free calls and that leads to 25-30 crore missed calls on its network on a daily basis. That leads to 65-75 crore minutes of callbacks when Jio users callback the numbers from which they missed the calls. Since the company has to pay for all these calls, it was counting on complete waiver of IUC charges as TRAI had planned earlier. However, a recent consultation paper floated by TRAI causes policy uncertainties and hints as extending the IUC charges for longer.
The Mukesh Ambani led company says, it had to pay Rs 13,500 crore to rivals such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea for IUC charge from its own resources. The company did so since it was counting on a complete waiver beginning January 1, 2020. However, the policy uncertainty has forced it to stop subsidising and pass on the IUC burden to users.