Reliance Jio on Friday said it is working with Reliance Foundation to provide 300 free minutes of outgoing calls per month — or 10 minutes per day — for the entire period of the pandemic.

It is learnt that Reliance’s CSR activities are largely done by the foundation. The offer comes at a time Jio has reported a drop in the average revenue per user.

The scheme will be available to JioPhone users who have not been able to recharge because of the lockdowns imposed by states, the company said in a statement.

Reliance Jio is the first company to announce free talk time for users in the second wave of the pandemic.

In addition to the free talk time, every JioPhone plan recharged by a JioPhone user will get an additional recharge plan of the same value for free.

However, these offers are not applicable on annual or JioPhone device bundled plans.

Subscriber challenge

Reliance has 415 million wireless subscribers against Airtel’s 348 million and Vodafone’s 282 million. It added 4.26 million subscribers in February against Airtel’s 3.7 million and Vodafone’s 652,625 subscribers during the month.

However, data showed 97.5 per cent of all Airtel subscribers are active against 78.2 per cent of Jio and 90.6 per cent at Vodafone, according to the VLR data (Visitor Location Register) maintained by Trai.

Analysts said the numbers indicate Airtel is more focused on adding quality and high-paying customers than Jio, which wants more subscribers.

The drop in Jio’s quarterly ARPU (average revenue per user) is because it is losing high-paying subscribers and adding low-paying ones.

ARPU is a key indicator of the performance of a telecom player. In the fourth quarter, Jio’s ARPU fell to Rs 138 per subscriber per month from Rs 151 in the December quarter.