From January 1, 2021 Reliance Jio will make all off-net domestic voice calls free. The announcement came after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), conveyed that the ‘Bill and Keep’ system is being implemented in the country from January 1, 2021, thereby ending interconnect usage charges (IUC) for all domestic voice calls.
TRAI said in September 2019 that it would take further time to implement the Bill & Keep system (i.e) beyond 1st January 2020.
Jio had no option but to charge its customers for the calls they make to other networks at a rate exactly equivalent to the applicable IUC charge. In spite of facing certain challenges, Jio announced that it would give free voice calls for certain minutes (a minimum of 1000 minutes) depending on the type of recharge pack the customers opt for. After the total usage of these minutes, the customers were charged.
While doing so, Jio had assured its users that this charge would continue only till the time TRAI abolished IUC charges. Now, Jio has delivered on that promise and made off-net voice calls free again.
“Jio stands firm on its commitment to make the common Indian the beneficiary of advanced technologies like VOLTE. Jio is a customer-obsessed organization and cares for every single user. All our users enjoy free voice calls with Jio,” an official statement from Jio said.