A decision by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio has caused a huge amount of losses to investors of Sunil Mittal’s company Airtel. On Thursday, Reliance Jio made a big announcement for the users as the company will once again make all off-net domestic voice calls free, starting January 1, 2021.
It was in September 2019 Reliance Jio started charging its customers for off-net voice calls after the TRAI and extended the timeline for implementation of IUC on mobile-to-mobile calls beyond January 2020.
Well, according to the directions of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the Bill and Keep regime is being implemented for the users in the country from January 1, 2021, to end all the interconnect usage charges (IUC) for all domestic voice calls.
After this big announcement, the stock of Reliance Jio’s competitor Bharti Airtel has registered a big decline. On December 31st, Airtel slumped as much as 2% in intra-day trades after Reliance Jio announced to make its plan off-net calls free from January 1, 2021.
On the National Stock Exchange (NSE), Bharti Airtel’s stock was last seen trading around Rs 508.95, down by Rs 7.70 or 1.5% at 1504 hours.
“Honouring its commitment to revert off-net domestic voice-call charges to zero, as soon as IUC charges are abolished, Jio will once again make all off-net domestic voice calls free, starting 1st January 2021,” Reliance Jio said in a statement.
“Jio stands firm on its commitment to make the common Indian the beneficiary of advanced technologies like VoLTE,” the company added.
However, Reliance Jio is expected to slightly modify its plan in the coming days in accordance with the removal of Interconnect Usage Charges (IUC).