Reliance Jio’s plans to rule the 4G market involves unique content services, and not disruptive pricing as has been expected from the operator.
Many still await the launch of Reliance Jio‘s 4G services in India, and one of the primary reasons is the widely rumored disruptive pricing. As per leaks we have come across, Jio’s 4G plans will be a whole lot cheaper than the likes of Airtel and Vodafone, thereby disrupting the current market. But if a new report is to be believed, Jio has different plans for its launch and ’ultra low pricing’ is not a part of those plans.
In a research note, UBS states that contrary to expectations Jio won’t be opting for disruptive pricing. Instead the plans are to differentiate itself from rivals on the ‘basis of quality of service’, ET reports. Having lost out on first mover’s advantage to the likes of Airtel and Vodafone, Jio is said to be ramping up its content offerings.
These are likely to include instant messaging, live TV, movies-on-demand, news, streaming music and a digital payments platform among others. A recent video leaked some of these services, namely JioPlay, Jio-on-Demand, JioBeats, JioMags, JioNews, JioDrive and JioExpressnews. These services are likely to be subscription based and likely to be free for the first 90 days.
It makes sense for Jio to focus more on the quality instead of just the pricing or adding number of users. Recent reports suggest that tariffs are likely to start from as low as 0.5p per 10KB, which corresponds to Rs 5/MB, whereas video calls will cost 5p per second. A recent report also suggested that the company plans on upgrading its CDMA users to 4G LTE networks.
These are still cheap as compared to existing operators, but some of testers comment that the overall quality leaves a lot to be desired. Upgrading CDMA users will also add the number of subscribers, but most of these users have an entry-level phone, and the company will also have to come up with affordable upgrading plans for them.
The research note reiterates that Jio’s commercial launch will be at the end of the year, and a soft launch will take place towards the end of this month. While Jio’s SIM cards are said to have reached Reliance Digital stores along with the LYF-branded smartphones, they are not quite available to buy yet. Hopefully they do it by end of this month.
Source: bgr.in
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