Jio recently trumped Vodafone to become the second largest telecom operator in India after Airtel. But that isn’t keeping Vodafone from launching attractive offers to keep its users migrating to Jio.
Vodafone has now announced a long-validity plan with modest data offering and unlimited calling to take on Jio. Priced at Rs 597, the prepaid plan gives 10GB of 4G data along with free local and STD calling for a period of 112 days. The benefits also include 100 SMS per day.
For “new” feature phone users, the validity increases to a period of 168 days. However, there’s no clarity on whether these users will be able to use 4G data on feature phones like the JioPhone 2 or even 2G on simpler devices.
This plan competes with Jio’s Rs 98 plan which offers 2GB of data along with free calling and a total of 300 SMS for a period of 28 days. If a user recharges with this plan for four subsequent cycles i.e. 112 days, its cost will be Rs 392 which is still less than Vodafone’s new plan. However, Vodafone’s plan offers additional 2GB data which can be handy to those users who don’t consume a lot of media on their smartphones. At the same time, Airtel offers the same benefits at the same price of Rs 597, however, with a longer validity of 168 days.
The plan is applicable to all users across all circles in India. Notably, while other operators have lifted daily and weekly limits on “unlimited” calling, Vodafone still caps calling to 250 minutes per day and 1,000 minutes per week.
Vodafone recently also announced the Rs 159 plan which comes with a validity of 28 days and offers benefits such as 28GB of data, alongside unlimited calling and 100SMS per day. Meanwhile, Airtel offers 1GB per day for Rs 149 while Jio offers 1.5GB of data for the same price.
We hope upcoming Vodafone-Idea merger allows the two companies to price their plans more aggressively to prevent users from jumping the fence and adopting Jio as their go-to operator.
