Reliance Jio 4G data speed lags Airtel, RCom, Idea, Vodafone; now free only till Dec 3

Over a month and nearly 2 crore subscribers later, Reliance Jio (RJio) seems to be facing more issues than just call drops. 

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) data show that RJio's 4G speeds are in fact the lowest among all telecom service providers in India. 

The trend shows that the company's average 4G data speed stood at just 6.2Mbps. While Airtel is providing 4G data speed at 11.4Mbps, which is at the top of the list followed by Reliance Communication with 7.9Mbps. Marginal gap was seen between Idea Cellular and Vodafone India at with 7.6Mbps and 7.3Mbps, respectively. 

According to a India Today report, as per the test done by a speed test app, Ookla, the company's download speeds for 4G capable phones dropped 23% month-over-month. In the month of September, the mean download speed has falled from 11.31 Mbps to 8.77 Mpbs and now to 6.2 Mbps, as shown by Trai data. 

A Reliance Jio spokesperson said, “With reference to statistics published TRAI’s analytics website, we have performed an internal analysis of the same.  Based on this analysis, we believe that the comparison of Jio speeds with other operators has an inherent bias against Jio data usage."

As you may be aware, under the Jio Welcome Offer, there is a daily fair usage policy (FUP) limit of 4GB data consumption per user. This limit has been setup with the express intention of preventing heavy data users from degrading the experience of other users.

Before this FUP limit is reached, Jio customers enjoy unmatched 4G LTE speeds on the Jio network.  However, after the FUP usage limit is reached, speeds are reduced to 256kbps.  Full 4G LTE speeds are once again restored once the next 24-hour period begins.

Apart from failing to meet its own 4G promise, the company is not able to provide a suitable call network. During the beginning of the month, the subscribers had complained that they are facing call drops due to congested Point of Interconnections (POI) shared between incumbent telecom companies.

Jio's call drop rates are the highest among telecom companies as the telecom’s subscribers are faced with 14.22 crore call drops on a daily basis as on October 1.

This is not all. The company, which promised free services to all customers till December end has now decided to cut short the offer. The company has said that customers can use free services only till December 3. It said, "The revised offer of free services by RJIL has been limited to 90 days i.e. up to December 2, 3016, and, therefore, is consistent with the guidelines on promotional offers."

Reliance Jio promotional offer valid till 3rd December only
@ZeeBusiness @reliancejio @TRAI @TelecomTalk pic.twitter.com/IxAJYK5yHp

— aseem manchanda (@aseemmanchanda) October 20, 2016

Infact, while announcing its financial results today, the company in a regulatory filing said, "During the quarter, Jio announced the commencement of services, as per terms of its Unified License, with ‘Jio Welcome Offer’ which became effective from 5 September 2016. As part of the Jio Welcome Offer’, users have access to unlimited LTE data and national voice, video and messaging services along with the full bouquet of Jio applications and content, free of cost up to 31 December 2016. All the Jio applications, including JioTV, JioCinema, JioMusic, JioMagazine, JioNews, which bouquet is worth Rs. 15,000 for an annual subscription, have been provided complimentary for all active Jio subscribers up to 31 December 2017."

On October 9, the company had claimed that it has created 'a world record' by crossing the 16 million subscriber mark in just 26 days. 

"Reliance Jio growing by more than half a million users a day", said Anshuman Thakur, Strategy and Planning head of Reliance Jio told to Bloomberg.

On its launch day, Ambani had said that his  new telecom venture would aim to acquire 100 million customers "in the shortest possible time and create a new world record". This would translate into a data usage of 250 crore gigabyte per month, he had then said.