Reliance Jio

All domestic voice calls from Reliance Jio to be free from January 1, 2021

Since late 2019, Jio’s plans capped minutes for calls made to other networks depending on the plan chosen.

Published on:

31 Dec 2020, 9:52 am

Reliance Jio announced on Thursday that all domestic calls will be free, after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) interconnect usage charges (IUC) regime comes to an end with December 31. IUC is what is levied when a subscriber on one network makes a call on another network, with the charge being paid by the network from which the call originated to the network where the call was placed.

Initially, since all of Jio’s calls were free, it ended up being the network which was the net payer of IUC to networks such as Airtel and Vodafone Idea. It lobbied hard for the charges to be scrapped, but in 2019, the TRAI had extended it till the end of 2020. After this, Jio started levying 6 paise per minute on calls made to other networks, the same as the IUC charge. After this was levied, it reportedly became a net earner.

“Jio has been compelled, most reluctantly and unavoidably, to recover this regulatory charge of 6 paise per minute for all off-net mobile voice calls so long as IUC charges exist,” Jio had said in a statement in 2019 when it started levying the charge.

Jio announced that with the IUC regime ending as TRAI has not given any update, it will make domestic voice-call charges zero starting January 1, 2021. Calls from Jio to Jio have always been free.

“For context, in September 2019, when TRAI extended the timeline for implementation of the Bill & Keep regime beyond 1st January 2020, Jio was left with no option but to start charging its customers for offnet voice calls, at a rate exactly equivalent to the applicable IUC charge. While doing so, Jio had assured its users that this charge would continue only till the time TRAI abolished IUC charges. Today, Jio has delivered on that promise and made off-net voice calls free again,” Jio said in a statement.

Jio had hiked tariffs in its plans in December 2019 by nearly 40%, but had capped the minutes of calls made to other networks — ranging anywhere from 300 to 12,000 minutes depending on the plan.

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