Reliance Jio will be the service provider for Indian Railways from January 1

Railways has been using Bharti Airtel for more than six years as the telecom provider. And, over 1.95 lakh mobile phone connections used by the employees in CUG (Closed User Group) use the network across the country. Some officials have stated that the railways had paid around Rs. 100 crores bill per year for the same. However, its validity will expire on December 31, 2018.

Now, it is said that Reliance Jio will become the most sought-after accounts in telecom - the railways starting from January 1. It is believed that Jio will slash the phone bills spent by the national transporter at least by 35%.

Reliance Jio and RailTel

An order issued by the Railway Board on November 20 states that it had assigned the responsibility to RailTel for finalization of fresh CUG scheme for the Railways as the current scheme will expire on December 31. The Fresh CUG scheme has been finalized by RailTel and Reliance Jio has been granted the contract for this scheme. It was revealed that the fresh CUG will come to effect on January 1, 2019.

Notably, CUG is a supplementary service provided by mobile operators to their subscribers so that they can make and receive calls from any member associated in the group. The service is also applicable for SMSes.

Jio tariff plans for the Railways

Going by the same, Reliance Jio will provide 3G/4G connections and calls for free of cost. The telco will offer four packages to the Railways. One will be for the senior most officials (2% of subscribers) offering 60GB data per month for Rs. 125. The next one is the 45GB plan with a rental of Rs. 99 for the joint secretary level officers, which is 26% of the subscribers. The third one is the 30GB monthly plan for Rs. 67 for the Group C staff, which is a whopping 72% of the subscribers and the last one is the Rs. 49 plan for bulk SMS.

Cheaper tariff plans

In general, Jio offers 1GB data for Rs. 20. For instance, if you have subscribed to the 256GB plan costing Rs. 199, then you will get 1GB of data for Rs. 20 on doing a top up. But the Railway employees will get the 2GB of additional data for Rs. 10.

Last month, Reliance Jio came out as the lowest bidder for the account surpassing Airtel and Vodafone. There are expectations that railways demanded free calls from bidders and got it from all the telcos. However, Jio came out as a frontrunner as it offered the lowest data cost.