Reliance Jio, the country’s largest telecom operator, has announced that all domestic voice calls from its network to others will be free from January 1, 2021. This comes as the interconnect usage charges (IUC) regime for domestic voice calls will come to an end.

According to the telecom regulator’s directions, a ‘Bill and Keep’ regime is being implemented in the country from January 1, 2021, thereby ending IUC charges for all domestic voice calls, it said in a statement.

The telco added that the latest announcement follows its commitment to revert off-net domestic voice-call charges to zero as soon as the IUC charges are abolished. Off-net calls refer to calls that terminate in other operators’ networks

“Jio will once again make all off-net domestic voice calls free, starting January 1 2021. On-net domestic voice calls have always been free on the Jio network,” it added.

Call termination charges, or interconnect usage charge (IUC), is a fee paid by one operator to another when its customers make outgoing calls to the other operator’s customers.

Jio, which had stormed the market with its free voice calls and cheap data tariffs, had in October last year said it will be charging customers 6 paise per minute for voice calls made to rival networks and that it took this step because of “regulatory uncertainty” over call termination charges to the network of its rivals that were supposed to end in January 2020.

The company added that when Trai extended the timeline for implementation of the ‘Bill & Keep’ regime beyond January 1, it was left with no option but to start charging its customers for offnet voice calls at a rate exactly equivalent to the applicable IUC charge.

Its announcement comes at a time the ongoing farmers protest has seen it receiving several port-out requests. The latest step could lead to some moderation in the number of customers opting out from its network.

In a recent letter to Trai, Jio, however, alleged that industry peers Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea Ltd (VIL) were running “vicious and divisive campaign” against it and making claims that migrating Jio mobile numbers to their networks would be an act of support to farmers’ protests.

In October, it added 2.22 million mobile customers, taking its total subscriber base to 406.35 million.

The addition number was, however, lower than that of Airtel, which added 3.67 million new customers in that month.

Jio had an average revenue per user (ARPU) of Rs 145 per subscriber per month during the second quarter ended September 30, 2020 as compared to Rs 140.3 in the preceding quarter.