With the initial invite-only trail going smoothly, Reliance Jio, India’s largest 4G operator by network, has opened its website to the public.
However, the only thing you can do on the new website, www.jio.com, is to request an invite to join the operator’s beta launch.
No tariff plans or hardware details are available.
As you may remember, Jio had last month started offering a new invite-only testing phase called the a ‘Preview Offer’ under which it offered unlimited use of its network for anyone who would buy a LYF phone.
The preview offer was a big hit, with thousands of people eager to try out the network despite reports of black spots and other network issues.
In fact, the primary reason for the preview offer was to find out how the network scaled in the face of strong demand. Some people have already downloaded hundreds of GBs of data since getting hold of the preview SIM.
Going by the decision to open it up to new users, it looks like the network has stood the initial test well.
No information is available about when the new users who register their interest on Jio.com will be given SIM cards and connection.
It is likely that they may also be given the option of buying Jio SIM cards without being forced to buy LYF handsets, which would make them the first external users to be able to test the network using their own handsets.
So far, only employees and their relatives or friends were able to get Jio SIM cards that could be used on all handsets.
Many people have refused to for the Preview Offer, after getting invites, because of the precondition that they would have to use a LYF handset.
LYF, despite offering a large variety of handsets, cannot match up to the value offered by companies like Xiaomi, Lenovo and LeTV.
For example, the Earth 1 model of LYF offers decent specifications including a 5.5-inch full-HD display, but it is priced at around Rs 20,000 — or twice as much as what very similar models from Xiaomi and LeTV come for.
In addition, LYF handsets are built around the Snapdragon 615 chipset, while LeTV and Xiaomi have introduced models with more powerful chipsets such as Snapdragon 650 and 652.
The Le 2, for example, will be twice as powerful as the Earth 1 due to the use of Snapdragon 652 chipset, despite costing substantially less than the LYF model.
However, LYF models make more sense for those who use more than 10 GB of mobile internet per month as they come with unlimited network access.
It is possible that in addition to non-bundled SIM cards and connections, Reliance Jio will also offer the unlimited preview offer to those who register on its website. However, as of now, there’s no word on any of it.
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