The week just past had some big stories, with plenty of action in the world of telecom, as seems to be the case every week. Apart from new plans and offers from telecom operators such as Reliance Jio[1], Airtel[2], Vodafone[3], and BSNL[4], we also saw an announcement related to in-flight connectivity in India, the launch of the Xiaomi Redmi 6[5] and Redmi 6A[6], the start of the MIUI 10 Global Beta ROM[7] rollout, changes in Facebook[8] and Google[9] ad policies, a ban on cryptocurrency mining on Apple's mobile devices, and the launch of the Uber Lite Android app, among others.
Let's start with the launch[10] of the Jio Double Dhamaka offer. Jio is offering 1.5GB of additional data per day on prepaid recharges priced between Rs. 149 and Rs. 799. The offer ends on June 30. Notably, the pack validities remain the same, and maintain other features like a post-FUP speed of 64kbps, unlimited calls, free 100 SMS messages per day, and access to Jio apps. Reliance Jio also launched a Rs. 499 recharge with a validity of 91 days and 3.5GB data per day, totalling 318GB for the period. Recharges of Rs. 300 and above will be eligible for Rs. 100 discount if purchased from MyJio app and if the transaction is made using PhonePe. For packs below Rs. 300, users get discounts of up to 20 percent.
Next up, was a report[11] by OpenSignal[12] that claimed the overall download speeds of Jio were declining, in contrast with improvements on the part of Airtel, Idea, and Vodafone. The report looked...