Jio launches lowest rental of Rs 49 for feature phone users

New Delhi: Turning its focus towards feature phone users, Reliance Jio on Thursday announced the lowest rental plan of Rs 49 in which it will offer unlimited voice and data for 28 days for JioPhone subscribers, effective January 26.

"JioPhone users will enjoy free voice calls and unlimited data (1GB at high speed) for 28 days at a price of only Rs 49. Jio is also introducing affordable data add-ons at Rs 11, 21, 51 and 101," the company said in a statement.

"Tariffs charged for feature phone users continue to be exorbitant, while their smartphone counterparts on Jio enjoyed free voice calls and high speed data at the most affordable tariffs. The high feature phone tariffs make it impossible for them to even think of using data...Jio has made data affordable for everyone," the statement said.

Besides, the telco as part of its 'Republic Day offer' will double the validity of Rs 98 pack to 28 days from the current 14 days.

"...this Republic Day will mark an acceleration towards achieving the vision of Digital Freedom for the 50 crore feature phone users of India. Currently, they can neither afford even the cheapest 4G LTE smartphone, nor the exorbitant cost of data and voice charged for 2G services," Jio said.

Recently, Reliance Jio also decided to offer 500 MB extra data to its subscribers using 1GB and 1.5GB per day data packs with effect from January 26.

Mobile data rates will see a further drop to as low as Rs 2.7 per GB with Reliance Jio announcing extra 500 MB data for its users of select plans as part of 'Republic Day offer', as per a Bank of America Merrill Lynch report. Jio's closest rival Bharti Airtel data cost per GB has dropped to Rs 4 under its new schemes.

The tariff of Rs 2.7 per GB data is about 99 per cent lower compared to Rs 249-259 per GB charged by established big operators till August 2016 -- before commercial launch of Jio services.