Telcos offer discounts to stop exodus to Jio

New Delhi: Leading telecom players are offering discounts to consumers who are trying to port their mobile number to Reliance Jio in order to retain their high value customers.

Mobile number portability (MNP) allows a mobile subscriber to change his or her mobile operator while retaining the mobile number.

Reliance Jio offer to give free voice calls has created a huge buzz in the market. Jio has also said that it will not charge for voice and data till December 31.

This has generated an interest among consumers and many are trying to shift their operator to join Jio to take benefit of free voice calls and data. However, leading operators are calling up their high value customers who are trying to port to Jio, which begins its service from Monday, to persuade them not to change.

According to sources, some of the operators are desperately calling their subscribers who have sent request to port their numbers and are offering an immediate discount of upto 33 per cent in monthly rentals if they don’t port their numbers.

Consumers are also being promised to wait for some time as their incumbent operators will try to match Jio.

“Customers are being offered discounts on their rentals  for six months and asked to wait for sometime as their operator will try to offer more schemes of discounted tariff in coming days.

The discount in tariff are only to induce them to wait till their operator device their tariff strategy to counter Jio and ensure there is no mass migration,” said market sources.

RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani had also appealed to incumbent operators not to prevent their customers to port to Jio. “They have an obligation to also not to limit customers’ right to migrate to Jio using MNP,” said Mr Ambani. Manmohan Singh launched mobile number portability on January 20, 2011