Airtel, Vodafone call Jio tariffs a gimmick

TIL Desk/Business/Mumbai-Both Bharti Airtel and Vodafone, the incumbents in the telecom sector, have come out with identical communiqués for their customers, claiming that the Jio tariff plan, unveiled days before, wasn’t as good as it looked.

Comparative charts in the communications highlight the difference between plans offered by the new entrant and the incumbents. These also question the quality of Jio’s voice network, and explain how Jio is not offering data at Rs 50 per GB as it has claimed. Last week, Jio had announced it would offer data at Rs 50 per GB and voice calls would be free all across India.

Airtel, the country’s largest telecom services provider, has countered Reliance Jio’s tariff plans and called it a “marketing gimmick”.  Vodafone, on the other hand, has asked if Jio’s claim of Rs 50 per GB of data is “reality or packaging.” A detailed chart compares what Jio is offering with its own existing plans, which shows that Jio’s data pricing is not offering data at Rs 50 per GB.