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The company has brought three new “work-from-home” top-up plans that are available at the denominations of Rs 151 (30 GB), Rs 201 (40 GB) and Rs 251 (50 GB), which supplement usage once the daily limit is exhausted, as per the company’s website.
With these plans, the average data cost comes to about Rs 5 per GB.
Under the existing top-ups, which will continue, data on Jio network costs in the range of Rs 8.5 to Rs 21 per GB.
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So, despite the increase in the value of the 365 days validity, the annual plan is 33 per cent cheaper than rivals due to extra data offered by it.
Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea offer similar annual plans for Rs 2,398 and Rs 2,399 respectively, with a daily data limit of 1.5 GB at 4G speed.
The new plans from Jio comes at a time when companies have been pushing the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and government to legally raise data prices by up to 5-10 times to address financial stress that some companies are facing.
Mobile subscribers get access to 4G data at a price as low as Rs 3.5 per GB but if the floor price is fixed as demanded by telecom operators, the mobile internet prices will rise 5-10 times from the current level.
Vodafone Idea has proposed that the minimum price of data should be fixed at Rs 35 per GB and Bharti Airtel has recommended a minimum price of Rs 30 per GB for low data users. Reliance Jio wants data prices to be hiked gradually to Rs 20 per GB.
In the latest developments, Reliance Jio’s parent firm Jio Platforms has raised Rs 60,596.37 crore in less than three weeks by selling a stake of around 13 per cent to Facebook, Silver Lake and Vista.