Jio Prime Ending on March 31, but No Word on What's Next

HIGHLIGHTS

• Jio is expected to make an announcement about Prime in the next few days
• The Prime membership is currently priced at Rs. 99
• There are over 160 million customers on the Jio network

Jio Prime, the subscription service launched by the Mukesh Ambani-backed telecom operator last year, will be expiring on Saturday, March 31. The Jio Prime service provides users additional data and other freebies such as free SMSes and free access to apps the company provides. And, over time, it became necessary for Jio users to subscribe to Prime in order to recharge their number - the Rs. 99 membership fee would be added to the cost of the recharge if they were not members yet. And regardless of when you purchased the membership, whether in March last year or in August, the ongoing subscription will come to an end for you this Saturday.

But this begs the question: what happens next? We take a look at Jio Prime, and what may happen next for the members:

While announcing that the company has amassed 100 million users in less than 180 days, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani launched the Jio Prime subscription based service last year. Prime users were to be given additional data at the same prices compared to non-Prime members. Somewhere down the line, Prime membership became a requirement for all popular Jio plans, and if you didn't already have one, it would automatically be added to your number, if you were recharging your Jio number from the official app or website.

With the Prime subscription ending later this week, we can expect the operator to make an announcement regarding it in the next few days. This could either be a continuation of Prime services for another Rs. 99 for another year, or a small increase in subscription fee. Needless to say, with Prime memberships ending March 31, 2018 even if you buy one today, it would be a terrible time to be buying one right now. Jio customer care told Gadgets 360 that validities of ongoing packs will continue even after the current Prime membership ends, meaning if you've already applied multiple recharges to your account, you don’t need to worry about being impacted by any future changes to recharges you’ve already done.

The Prime subscription is essential if you want to benefit from the offers the company provides from time to time, such as the Rs. 50 discounts on recharge packs with daily data allocations. Similarly, the Jio promise to offer data tariffs 20 percent lower than the nearest competitor works out for Prime users only. Moreover, the access to content apps, which the operator values at Rs. 10,000 for the whole year, comes only with plans for which Prime subscription is a pre-requisite. Jio's suite of apps includes Jio TV, Jio Music, Jio News, etc. However, despite the membership, customers are still required to purchase separate recharge packs with validities to use the network.