Reliance Jio Again Makes Voice Calling Free, from 2021

Reliance Jio has often appeared as a secret Santa for its users. Though most of the users were offended when Jio faced away from its promise of lifetime free calls when it launched.

So now it is all set to win hearts again on this new year as India’s biggest telecom has announced today that it is making all domestic calls free starting 1st January 2021.

Now we will once again be able to place free calls from Jio number to any domestic network across India, we won’t have to pay for minutes to call non-Jio numbers.When the users were enraged for charging calls, Jio put forward the fact, that due to a delay in the implementation of the ‘Bill and Keep regime‘ by TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) in 2020, it had no option but to charge the applicable IUC (interconnect usage charges) for making calls to networks outside Jio.

It led the company to ramp up the prices of its 4G LTE tariff plans in India back in 2019. It was charging 6 paise per minute (the IUC charge set by TRAI) for calls to Airtel, Idea, or BSNL numbers from Jio’s network.

Free Voice Calls to Any Network from Jio

Now, in an official press release, Reliance Jio has shared that the ‘IUC regime’ for domestic voice calls will come to an end today, and will be replaced with the ‘Bill and Keep regime’ on 1st January 2021.

Thus, the company has reemphasized its promise and decided to once again make all off-net domestic voice calls free. On-net domestic voice calls have always been free for Jio users if you didn’t already know.

Further, Reliance Jio added that it strives for India

“to be a free-voice nation, with the majority of smartphone users enjoying free voice calls.”

They opt to reach each corner of India and take a step closer to digital India.

This is no doubt a great New Year’s gift to its subscribers from Jio.

The company currently is the biggest telecom in India and has more than 406 million subscribers, and only offers 4G LTE services in India. Jio is aiming to be the first to roll out 5G network services in the second half of 2021.

It has also urged the government to introduce new policies to speed up the spectrum auction and testing process.

The company also plans to contribute to the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative with the use of indigenously-developed hardware and technology components to make India more employable for the youth.