Reliance Jio on Wednesday launched new tariff plans starting from ₹19 a day. The plans offer big discount to users who subscribe before March 31 under the Prime Membership plan.

For example, for ₹499, subscribers of prime membership will get 60GB data with a daily cap of 2GB. Non-members get only 5GB. Similarly, for ₹303, prime members get 60GB data while others get only 2.5GB. RJio has also launched an annual plan for ₹9,999. This is the first time an operator has offered a plan valid for the entire year. Voice is free on all plans.

The discounted membership plan is being targeted at retaining the 100 million users who have been using the RJio services for free since September. These users have been given time till March 31 to switch to prime membership by paying an upfront one-time fee of ₹99.

While the prime membership tariffs are clearly much lower than the tariff plans offered by incumbent operators, RJio tariffs for non-prime members is higher comparable to incumbent operators. For example, Airtel is offering 4GB data for 28 days under its ₹345 plan. In comparison, RJio is giving 2.5GB data for ₹303. RJio strategy clearly seems to be aimed at acquiring all cost conscious subscribers by March 31 with the prime membership scheme.

Huge demand

Meanwhile, users who wanted to switch to the new Prime membership faced difficulties as the telecom operator was unable to cope up with the huge demand. There are over 100 million RJio users currently who have to either switch to the new plan or give up connection.

A number of users complained that they could not switch over to the new plan. An executive working at RJio store said that the demand from users was so high that the servers that manage customer billing were running full capacity. “It should ease up in a day or two. Initially, there could be issues but these are just teething problems,” the executive said.

Reliance Jio has been offering free services to users since September. But from April 1, it will start charging.

Reliance Jio users can enrol into the Prime programme via MyJio app or by visiting the nearest retail outlet. “Most of the stores owned by Reliance are equipped with enough capacity to handle the rush. The problem could be in the third party owned smaller stores,” said another executive.

A Mumbai-based user said he could switch easily as he stayed up late at night to subscribe to the new plan.

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