Reliance Jio to Charge 6 p./minute to Vodafone and Airtel for Outgoing Calls

Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. is now going to charge customers 6 paise per minute for the calls that have been made to the rival networks, till such time that the telecom regulator moves to a zero termination-charge regime, the company stated in a statement after market on Wednesday. Jio users, on the other hand, are going to be compensated with free data of similar value.

Chris Lane, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein said in a note that the move “seems like a big deal, in so far as the market has been waiting for Jio to move from a land grabber to focusing on profitable growth,”

Shares of Vodafone Idea Ltd. along with Bharti Airtel Ltd. surged after the wireless carrier controlled by Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani stated that it is going to end free voice calls on its network.

Vodafone, Idea jumped as much as 18%, set for the biggest intraday gain since the month of August, while Bharti, on the other hand, climbed 4.8% at 10:48 a.m. in Mumbai. Reliance Industries Ltd. provides the details of the rose for the third day.

Jio has already paid around ₹13,500 crore in user fees to its rival operators since its launch in 2016, as per the statement. The regulator, on the other hand, had planned to scrap these charges from the month of January next year, but drifted a fresh consultation paper in order to see if the date needed to be revised or not, a move that forced Jio to go back on its promise in order  to keep voice calls free.

New Jio IUC plans

IUC or Interconnect Usage Charge is basically the amount that a telecom operator has to pay to the other telecom operator if any of the customers makes an outgoing call to another customer of the other telecom operator. The TRAI is the one who decides the IUC charge and at present, all the operators have to pay 6 paise per minute.

With new plans, Jio is now offering four new IUC plans with additional data benefits. Here is the list of all the plans that are listed with the benefits:

1. Rs 10 plan is going to offer 124 minutes of IUC minutes to non-Jio numbers along with 1GB data.
2. Rs 20 plan is going to offer 249 minutes of IUC minutes to non-Jio numbers along with 2GB data.
3. Rs 50 plan is going to offer 656 minutes of IUC minutes to non-Jio numbers along with 5GB data.