Reliance Communications — an Anil Ambani company — is asking its postpaid mobile subscribers to choose from one of the new, more-expensive plans introduced by the company as part of its 4G upgrade.
Wipod or dongle users are likely to continue on their old CDMA plans. There is some confusion on this point, please see the comments section.
For Wipod users, Reliance has specifically said in its FAQ on 4G upgrade that pre-migration plan benefits will continue after the upgrade to 4G. However, no such promise has been made for mobile data users.
According to postpaid users, RCom is sending them an email saying:
“We are pleased to introduce new 4G postpaid data plans, as applicable to subscribers moving to our 4G platform. Kindly choose from any of the above plans and inform us by reaching out to our customer care number *355…”
“In case we do not hear from you on your preferred plan option, we would change your plan.. as mentioned below,” the letter from Reliance Communications said, according to user reports.
The new plans are far costlier than existing plans, though data speeds would be higher.
An estimated 90% of the total data on RCom’s CDMA network was being consumed on dongles, and only a small fraction on mobile phones. As such, this move will not impact a large part of the postpaid upgrade population.
However, for those who use CDMA data using their mobile phones, this will require subscribers to pay several times what they were paying before the 4G upgrade for consuming the same amount of data.
While mobile phone users could earlier get 4 GB of high-speed data for around Rs 250, under the upgraded plans, they will get 1 GB.
Voice users — who try to port out through the MNP route — may not be able to use mobile number portability as the ‘upgradation’ from CDMA to 4G could make them unqualified for another MNP action for the next 90 days. Under India’s MNP rules, users have to wait for 90 days to port their number after doing so once.