Reliance Jio launches voice and video calling over Wi-Fi
Reliance Jio said it has been "testing this service over the past few months to provide a robust experience to every customer at launch", and will enable the feature pan-India between January 7 and 16
on Wednesday launched voice and video calling over Wi-Fi service that will allow customers to switch seamlessly from LTE to Wi-Fi-based calling when they are at home or office.
The company said Jio Wi-Fi calling - which works on the largest ecosystem of handsets - will also allow users to make video calls over Wi-Fi. The service would be available for free.
The announcement comes less than a month after rival Airtel launched a similar service in Delhi-NCR.
Jio said it has been "testing this service over the past few months to provide a robust experience to every customer at launch."
Customers can use any Wi-Fi network for Jio Wi-Fi-calling. The voice and video calls will seamlessly switch over between VoLTE and Wi-Fi to provide an enhanced voice/video-calling experience, it added.
"At this juncture, when an average Jio consumer uses over 900 minutes of voice calls every month, and at a growing base of consumers, the launch of Jio Wi-Fi calling will further enhance every Jio consumer's voice-calling experience, which is already a benchmark for the industry with India's-first all VoLTE network," Reliance Jio Director Akash Ambani said.
Jio Wi-Fi Calling will be enabled pan-India between January 7 and 16, the statement said.
In December last year, Reliance Jio had said it will launch new unlimited plans for its customers, which will raise its voice and data tariff by up to 40 percent.
The Mukesh Ambani-led company, however, said that customers will get up to 300 percent more benefits under the new plans and it will offer fair usage policy for outgoing calls from its subscribers on the network of other telecom operators.
Jio said it will continue to work with the government on the consultation process for revision of telecom tariffs and looks forward to participation from all other stakeholders. Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel have also announced to raise mobile calling and data rates from December 3.
(Disclaimer: Additional background information has been added to this PTI copy for context)
