Jio phone will be available to all Indians for an effective price of Rs 0: Mukesh Ambani
#RILat40: Jio’s plan to collect a fully refundable, one-time, security deposit of Rs 1,500 with every #JioPhone
The Jio Phone will be available for user testing in beta from August 15. Pre-orders start from August 24. The phone will be available to everyone who pre-ordered from September. From the last quarter of this year, all Jio Phone units will be made in India.
The phone will be available from August 15, 2017.
Jio’s Digital freedom
The JioPhone is introduced by Akash and Isha Ambani, revealing the phone’s support voice commands, along with standard feature phone functionality. Isha Ambani said that the phone looks familiar by design, to ensure that it is easy to use.
The phone comes with a number of apps and browser installed aside from Jio’s offerings too. On stage, we caught glimpses of the JioPhone browser, Facebook, and also PM Modi’s Mann Ki Baat broadcast.
The company is also planning to add NFC support to the JioPhone to allow tap and payment solutions with a linked bank account, Akash Ambani said. This will also support UPI payments, and debit and credit card payments, similar to Samsung Pay, he said.
“Data is the oxygen of digital life, and no Indian should suffer because of unaffordability,” he added. “Sadly the vast majority of mobile users are starved of data. This unfairness must end, and Jio is committing to ending it today.”
To accomplish this, the company needs to deliver on three pillars, Ambani said – connectivity, data affordability, and device affordability. “Jio is a data strong network built for the Internet from the ground up,” he said. “The TRAI speedtest portal has consistently ranked Jio as the clear 4G network leader in coverage, usage, and data speeds.”
“Our network continues to rapidly expand. Jio, in the next 12 months, will cover 99 percent of the population. India’s 4G coverage will be more than its 2G coverage,” he added. To meet the need for device affordability, the company realised it would have to release a 4G VoLTE feature phone, as even an entry level smartphone costs between Rs. 3,000 and Rs. 4,500, Ambani said.
Shri Mukesh D. Ambani, CMD of RIL, speaking at the company’s 40th AGM.
Source credits : NDTV and JIOTV