Don’t Buy JIO Sim ? Why you should or should not use it

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Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited is a relatively new entrant in the world of 4G despite the fact Reliance’s sister concern Reliance telecom has already played a major role in the CDMA era. Despite being new to 4G world why isn’t Reliance marketing its 4G like other big players in the telecom industry is India is because they have this word of mouth publicity stunt going viral and subscribers forming long queues to grab a free connection with unlimited data and calls until December 31^st (previously December 3^rd), and there are some positive rumors both from the media and the Reliance’s staff that the offer might be extended until March 2017 for Postpaid user, prepaid user might or might not have these exceptional offers.

Everything about the Jio sim looks good till now unless its free, be it the call connection issues to call drops to low 4G speeds, because all you are paying is nothing. Despite this fact the competition is busy creating rumors to keep their decade old subscribers away from JIO and people tend to believe it.

There have been a lot of rumors and here’s what you should not believe about the rumors.

Mobile getting locked

This definitely is true but not totally. Here’s why.
Operators in the USA, Australia, UK and many such developed nations provide connections with a subsidized fee for the device you purchase from them and it stays locked until you are on a contract with them. This contract can be from as low as 6 months to a few years until they recover the price of the device , we can call it an easy EMI which has been and is a trend for years to lure customers sticking to their nonsense pricing for the sake of cheaper phones. With Jio it has been a similar case but only limited to LYF phones which come directly from the telecom provider and only the sim slot-1 is locked to JIO’s sim. But when you are using a independent phone which isn’t carrier locked (Jio in this case), the operator cannot lock it down because neither the IMEI is tied to the sim card provider nor does the phone belong to them or a contract under which it was provided. They need to have not just a piece of code on the phone locking it to the sim but also the authority to do so which TRAI does not permit currently in the current scenario which causes these rumors.

High or hidden tariff for the sake of being FREE

I totally understand the emotions of a average subscriber and even the Telco’s who have spent billions of bills in getting the infrastructure ready for profits JIO is definitely not taking it that easy but yes they are going easy and slow to capture the market and stay in it. Unlike the Reliance CDMA phones they are not going to make the same mistake down the line.

JIO’s plans are already out and clearly mention the data and available with each of them, at the most those plans are exclusive of taxes which is quite common with other Telco’s and even a business as small as a restaurant which mentions prices exclusive of taxes to keep it real clean.

Now tariffs are quite nominal and if there’s any hidden tariff what would JIO earn out of it. Most of its subscribers which it has set a benchmark for capturing in a record time will move back to their old operators. That’s not what JIO wants and the moral of story is it will continue with the same tariffs at least for another 1 to 2 years .

Original AADHAR card or photocopy being asked

What’s the deal about AADHAR card? It’s similar to a SSN which users in the US provide while they opt for credit cards or loans and even for new connection. It’s a mere identification document. And considering JIO is asking for original or photocopy (Xerox) of AADHAR, there’s no such thing called a original or photocopy. Your aadhar number verifies your fingerprint scan, you don’t even need to present a AADHAR card for JIO connection if you are on a e-KYC outlet, all you have to give is the AADHAR number.  As JIO is not a government authority it cannot take do anything with your LPG subsidy if you were to ask, the most it can do is blacklist the defaulters who are not paying their bills by their AADHAR number.  But you always have your family, friends and girlfriends to take a connection on their name for you, isn’t that simpler.

Cannot port JIO number (TRAI)

So this has been an issue every subscriber has been facing since the whole porting thing came up. Many operators started offering free data or waiver on bills for customers moving out of their network to lure them but soon they changed their mind and said hey we won’t accept your porting request and won’t provide a porting code since you haven’t paid your bills or you did not complete your term with us. Even simpler they claim it to be a mistake. But as long as you have cleared your dues and have completed 3 months of usage with current operator on your bill cycle no operator can stop you from porting and if it does you can file a complaint online with TRAI for the same.

Call drops and Calls do not connect

A lot of users have been facing this issue since their first call for Sim activation and tele-verification.
Long story short, JIO’s network is growing but still immature to handle the kind of load it is seeing with everyday subscribers and every Telco has worked on this for years . I see call drops with popular network providers but not that often. So let’s say JIO might need another year to work over these glitches and strengthen their network.  After all that’s why they are offering the whole freemium model instead of spending their marketing budget.

Long queues

This is pretty true because even if 10% of the population turns up for JIO sims it is going to form endless queues and believe it or not many subscribers couldn’t buy JIO sims for the same reasons but now things have eased up and with so many e-KYC and non-e-KYC counters you can expect to have shorter queues and can do half the registration with the MyJIO app.

Black connection (Illegal sales)

For the same reason of lack in sufficient JIO counters, people have been turning up to illegal JIO sim suppliers. And believe it or not some even went way ahead to open up a website to sell JIO sim with cash on delivery.  With so many people buying JIO sims for 200 bucks, some tend to disbelieve that JIO sims are available for Free. Now call it lack of education or overdone marketing by illegal suppliers.

Should you use JIO, The Verdict

Well I believe the best things in this world are Free. Whether its Google or open source software’s. Well, Jio isn’t free for life for you surely will make the most of it until it is free and rumors and some internal reports suggest that both prepaid and postpaid connection’s freemium model is being extended until March 2017. Some bigger rumor mills are suggesting that JIO will be free until December 2017 but for sure that is truly deniable and impractical.

Like many shop owner are suggesting to use the prepaid version of SIM instead of postpaid , we suggest the same but unlike what they say you need to break the sim after the sim moves to the non-freemium model ; actually you don’t need to do that. Those were fake theories decades back where a sim could be tracked even without a phone.  You can retail the sim even if it stays unused and goes to deactivation mode, there’s a nominal charge of 20 to reactivate it again.

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