Indian Railways Gets 35% Off Its Phone Bills From Next Year

Since its entry in the Indian market in 2016, Reliance Jio has been doing pretty well. Hence, the network has become a significant competitor for giant companies like Vodafone and Airtel.

Following this success, the firm has just won a big contract.

The Indian Railways, among the biggest and sought after the most accounts, has just set a business deal with Reliance Jio. Accordingly, from January 1, the network will start providing telecom service for roughly 1.95 lakh connections of employee mobiles around India.

The aforementioned cell phones are included in the closed user group of Indian Railways (CUG) which Bharti Airtel has been serving for Rs 100 crore each year. In case you don’t know about CUG, it’s a secondary scheme which a mobile company can provide. The scheme lets users in a closed group make phone calls and receive calls as well as exchange SMS at the company’s cost, yet they can also pay for the calls and messages on their own.

This year, the telecom contract between Bharti Airtel and Indian Railways will expire on December 31. Fortunately, the bill for next year may be smaller for Indian Railways, with an expected deduction of 35%, the railway company will pay only about Rs 65 crore.

Mukesh Ambani, Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited Chairman

Airtel has been providing telecom service for the railways for six years. But according to an order that was issued on November 20, Railways announced that RailTel is responsible for deciding on a new CUG scheme for Indian Railways because the current scheme will expire on December 31 this year. RailTel has finalized the fresh scheme for CUG and Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited has reportedly been given the contract to continue the scheme.

Basically, with this scheme, employees can maintain continuous connectivity with officials even when their phone accounts are empty. This year, the reason Reliance Jio managed to gain the contract is not only free SMS and calls but also cheap data service.