Jio extends free services offer to March 31

Disruptive Indian 4G operator Reliance Jio has extended its free services offer until March 31, and announced it has already achieved 52 million customers.

The operator has announced a new “Happy New Year” offer involving the supply of free voice, data and Jio apps to both new and existing customers until March 31.

Existing customers will automatically be signed up to the Happy New Year offer, without having to buy a new SIM.

But the new offer comes with a daily fair-use limit of 1GB, with broadband speeds shaped if this is exceeded.

According to the report, only 20% of users of the earlier Welcome Offer free services consumed over 1GB per day, and their heavy usage resulted in network congestion. The earlier offer had a fair-use limit of 4GB per day.

The new offer has come under scrutiny from the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), which is investigating the deal to determine whether it falls afoul of regulatory limits on promotions.

India only allows telecoms promotional offers to run for three months, but Jio has asserted that it is an entirely new campaign. The company has also argued that it would be unfair to charge customers while the operator is still dealing with congestion issues.

Jio also revealed it had reached over 52 million customers in 83 days, and has been signing up  600,000 customers per day over this time. Jio soft-launched 4G services for its employees and those of its partners months before the launch to the public, so the company already had a subscriber base.

This rate of growth makes Jio the fastest growing technology company in the world, according to parent company Reliance Industries’ owner Mukesh Ambani.