With the advent of Jio, there has
been much of consolidation happening in the telecom space, with
Vodafone-Idea in advance talks of their merger and Reliance
Communications already in talks about merging with Aircel, MTS and Tata
Teleservices. Seems like Jio has eaten a lot of these companies’
profits, with most of them showing a quarterly loss this time.
Earning
a world record in the process of getting 100 million Jio Consumers in
just 170 days! Today, Mukesh Ambani revealed, Jio’s plans after March
31st, when the “Happy New Year” Offer ends and what starts is called a
“Prime membership offer” (too bad for Amazon! ). On going through their
official website in order to get more sense of these
plans, there was negligible information available as of press time. So
after hearing whole of his speech and researching a bit, here’s what I
found out:
What this Prime offer means to you
Enrolling
in this membership will give you free access to all the content,
unlimited data and calling which you used during the “Happy New Year”
offer. Basically, at first, it was making you addicted of what Jio has
to offer on its platform, then charge for them, so this is how they plan
to charge you in order to give you all those services for “free”.
How to enroll for Jio Prime Membership
- Firstly, in order to avail this Jio Prime Membership, you need be an existing customer. If you aren’t a Jio subscriber, then make sure that you get your Jio 4G SIM before 31st of March in order to avail this membership.
- The Jio customers will have to pay a one-time fees of Rs. 99 to become a part of the Jio Prime Membership.
- Once you become a Jio Prime member, you can get all the benefits of the current “Happy New Year” offer by simply paying Rs.303 per month, which pretty much comes down to just Rs. 10 per day.
- The Jio Prime Subscription will be valid for another year i.e. till 31st March 2018.
- All the Jio users can enroll for the Jio Prime Membership starting 1st March till 31st March through MyJIo app/Jio.com/Jio Retail Store.
What this prime offer means to Jio
With
this Prime Membership offer, Jio essentially wants to make you their
exclusive customer by making you their “prime member”! By being so you
will be paying Rs. 303 a month (which is Rs. 3,636 an year) plus an
annual charge of Rs. 99 which takes the tally to Rs. 3,735 which you
will be spending to get host of everything that Jio offers for free,
which is still pretty cheap compared to others plans of telecom
companies.
What Jio will be earning here is Rs. 303 per month of fixed income (which crosses the avg. threshold of Rs. 150 per consumer, read my previous blog for more details) and getting that exclusivity tag. Currently, most of Jio consumers use Jio as an alternate number with their primary number. Jio wants to change that, it wants you to make Jio your primary go-to number! Even Mukesh Ambani said the same in his speech “We want you to make Jio your permanent home” Doing this, you will be paying only to Jio and not to anyone else, that’s what is the aim of this prime membership is, to get you bound to this “exclusive” club of free services so that you forget the other carriers and only use Jio for the full year
Keeping an eye out for competitors
Not only this, Mukesh Ambani also announced what he called “More value Offer” where he said Jio will be monitoring the plans unveiled by other telecom companies , they will match their plans and will also provide 20% more data in the same plan as of their competitor. Now this is how you crush your competitors!
Should you really enroll for the Prime membership?
Well, it depends, if you are a data hogger and are addicted to the host of Jio services like JioMags, JioMovies, JioTV, JioMusic,etc. Then this plan is for you, as it will give you all those services for free.
But if you are just a free voice-call and occasional data user, then I suggest you not to enroll for this membership. Instead, check out their plans!
Do make a note that this is optional and you don’t necessarily have to pay this in order to continue using Jio 4G service. If you wish to stay away from the Jio Prime membership, then you will continue to make free voice call without any roaming data whatsoever. Alternatively you can also go for the other tariff plans which the company announced previously, which will be effective starting 1st April. However, the Jio Prime Membership is not a bad deal considering the fact that you will be technically getting 30GB per month for Rs. 303. This is still way much better in comparison to what other competitions are offering.
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