After the initial euphoria and the hype about Reliance Jio 4G, it looks like both charm and speed have vanished into thin air. What began as a 45-minute speech by Ambani ended up wiping out a whopping Rs 11,983 crores for Bharti Airtel and instantly started a tariff war in the Indian telecom industry. Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular, and BSNL began to slash prices and introduce plans with their own USPs.
When Reliance Jio 4G service first started, it was made available only to LYF brand of smartphones. Later it was extended to include Samsung and other brands. In the beginning, there were a limited number of users and the service was incredibly fast. But as the flood gates opened and the demand for Reliance Jio SIM grew exponentially, the number of users availing the 90-day unlimited high-speed data, HD audio and voice calls, unlimited SMS has gone up by leaps and bounds. On September 5th many users reported amazing speeds that made watching even Ultra HD videos as seamless as possible, without any buffering.
But after September 5th, as many users started using the service when the Welcome Offer became available to the general public, the speed became sluggish. Many users complained that it took 1-2 seconds for normal apps like Facebook to load. Users have also reported speeds varying from 80kbps to 600kbps when downloading images and movies from Google Drive. 600kbps is far less speed than what’s promised by Jio 4G, but is decent enough.
Hotspot and Calls
Users have also noticed huge variations in speeds while on the hotspot. Speed suddenly dropped and then began to rise slowly. Sometimes, hotspot caused the network to disappear altogether. The quality “free” calls drop often and users also complained about WhatsApp calling not being a pleasant experience, with considerable lag during the call. Speaking about normal calls, it’s best not tried. Normal calls over Reliance Jio network sound like your friend speaking in Morse code, reports India Today. Unless you know how to decipher Morse code, it’s best to not make normal calls on Jio SIM.
To conclude, there seem to be several issues haunting Reliance Jio. From telcos refusing to provide necessary interconnect infrastructure support to massive drop in internet speeds – Reliance Jio is going through a rough patch. It remains to be seen how and when Reliance will address the issues plaguing Jio 4G.