Jio 4G is not perfect but it's free and it's in beta so stop whining
If you do a Twitter search nowadays, trying to figure out people's reaction to Jio, the 4G service that Reliance launched on September 5, you will find a lot of complaints. Most of these are genuine. There seem to be many issues, some minor, some major, with Jio. But guess what? This is something expected and all that whining that is coming from a lot of Jio users is currently without any context. It is also slightly unfair to Jio.
I have been using the Jio service for nearly two weeks now. And so far the experience has been so-so. It's strictly average. In the night the speed is better. In the day not so much. The network is unstable and at least on my phone, which is running Android Nougat and hence is quite rare, the Jio4GVoice app keeps crashing. Yet, I don't think there is a reason to complain. Let me explain.
There is reason why the Jio launch of the September 5 is a sort of soft launch. And that is also the reason why it is a free service for 3 months. This are early days for Jio, the days when it needs to be fine-tuned. The whole network probably needs to be optimised, the bugs and glitches need to be sorted out. But to do all this Reliance most likely needs to test it as a real network, with the proper usage load that it will have to face once tens of millions of users are using it. To do it, there are two ways: One, grow it gradually. This means launch it first in one city and then roll it out in another. Reliance is not doing that. Instead, it has launched Jio almost across whole India. But that means it needs to use the second method, and arguably the more expensive one, to make the network ready for commercial services. It is using the first three-months of service as a sort of beta testing.
This is similar to what big tech companies like Microsoft and Adobe do. They launch a new product as a beta. The Windows in beta stage is free. And so is Adobe's Photoshop and Lightroom. But these are not finished products. They have bugs. They make computers crash. They run slow and have performance issues. When thousands and thousands of people are using them, the tech companies collect the data and use it to give finishing touches to their services. Once the product is ready, the commercial launch happens and that is also when users are charged.
This is similar to what big tech companies like Microsoft and Adobe do. They launch a new product as a beta. The Windows in beta stage is free. And so is Adobe's Photoshop and Lightroom
The Jio's rollout of September 5 looks similar. It is the way to prepare the network for commercial services from January 1. That is the reason why from getting the SIM card to service itself, it seems to be a work in progress.
And because it is a work in progress it is free for consumers. When the voice calls don't go through, it is frustrating for consumers. But at least they are not losing money.
The only mistake that Jio seems to have made is not tagging the service as beta. Instead of Welcome Offer, it might have called the service Beta Offer or something like that. That would have sent the message that people should expect some unforeseen glitches as the network gets ready for the commercial launch.
As for how it is going to play, it is difficult to predict. Will the Jio services improve or will it just turn out to be something similar to what the Indian users have got so far from other telecom players? I don't know. The chances are that the Jio network, as the company fine-tunes it, should improve. But again, this is a total conjecture on my part. I don't know if it will get better or not. What is certain is that right now the service is free and there is a reason for that. A few decades ago, Milton Friedman famously quipped "there is no free lunch". In the case of Jio too, there is no free lunch. The users who join it right now should expect some bugs and glitches.
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