Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, two leading telecom operators in India, who have already launched 5G, are both employing different ways to go with the initial feedback from the customers of their 5G networks. Jio is offering the 5G service to select invited users chosen on a random basis for free, while Airtel users will be using the 5G from the data packet they already own for 4G. Jio is making it mandatory for users to recharge with the Rs 239 plan to get the 5G invite. However, once you get the 5G invite, then you don’t need to worry about how much data you are consuming as long as you are in the 5G coverage zone of the telco. Jio said that under its Welcome Offer, consumers are free to use as much data as they want at speeds of up to 1 Gbps. Here, the only time when a consumer’s FUP (fair usage policy) data will be used is when he/she is out of the 5G network coverage. So for Jio users, there are no worries about the amount of data they are consuming with 5G. However, the same is not the case with Airtel users.
Airtel Users Will Need to Work with the Amount of Data They Already Have, Which Might Not be Enough for 5G
5G is obviously going to increase the data consumption for the users. It would enable high data-consuming applications and use cases to come to life as well. Even when using normal applications such as Instagram or similar ones, you can be sure to see higher data consumption with 5G as compared to 4G. This means that the Airtel users currently trying to use 5G on their regular plans might find it a bit more expensive than 4G. Their data is likely going to be consumed at a faster rate with 5G than on 4G, and they would have to recharge more with the 4G data vouchers. It is worth noting that Airtel recently announced a new 4G data voucher of Rs 65, with which it is offering 4GB of data. The 5G tariffs need to bundle more data than the 4G tariffs in India or any part of the world. This is because of the natural tendency of 5G to consume more data than 4G.
