Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel are the two top telecom operators of India. Both the companies want to add more and more subscribers and gain a bigger market share than their competition. In order to do so, both Jio and Airtel offer users low-cost prepaid plans. From low-cost prepaid plans, we mean entry-level plans or plans below Rs 200. Jio provides 2 prepaid plans under Rs 200. The two plans come for Rs 149 and Rs 199 each, respectively. On the other hand, Airtel offers users multiple plans under Rs 200. These plans range from Rs 19 to Rs 199. We will be analysing these plans so that we can decide which company’s low-cost offerings are better.
Reliance Jio Low-Cost Prepaid Plans
Starting with Reliance Jio, as mentioned above, the company offers only two plans in the low-cost category. The first plan is for Rs 149. This plan ships with unlimited voice calling, 1GB daily data, 100 SMS/day for a total of 24 days. The Rs 199 plan comes with 1.5GB daily data for 28 days. This plan also offers unlimited voice calling and 100 SMS/day to the users. Further, both the plans include a complimentary subscription to all the Jio apps (JioTV, JioSecurity, JioCinema, JioNews, and JioCloud). That’s pretty much it from Reliance Jio.
Bharti Airtel Low-Cost Prepaid Plans
With Bharti Airtel, it is a different case altogether. Users looking for low-cost prepaid plans will get several options. All the prepaid plans from Airtel that come for less than Rs 200 cost Rs 19, Rs 129, Rs 149, Rs 179, and Rs 199. The cheapest plan that costs Rs 19 comes with 200MB data for 2 days. Users further get unlimited voice calling with this plan. There are no Airtel Thanks benefits as well as SMS benefits included. Moving on to the Rs 129 plan, it comes for 24 days and offers 1GB total data to the users. Other benefits of the plan include unlimited voice calling and a total of 300 SMS. Then the Rs 149 plan from the telco offers 2GB total data, unlimited voice calling, and 300 SMS in total for 28 days. There is only one difference between the benefits of the Rs 149 and Rs 179 plan of the telco. That difference is that the Rs 179 plan comes with Rs 2 lakh insurance offer from Bharti Axa Life Insurance.
So Which Telco Offers Better Low-Cost Plans?
The telco that offers better low-cost prepaid plans is Jio. But this conclusion is subjective in terms of users looking for prepaid plans with significant data benefits. If the user wanted 1GB daily data with unlimited voice calling and 100 SMS/day, he/she could get it for Rs 149 with Jio. Airtel offers the same plan for Rs 199, which is comparatively very expensive. For Rs 199, Jio offers users 1.5GB daily data for 28 days along with unlimited voice calling and 100 SMS/day. In addition to that, since most of the people living in remote or rural parts of India would want to go for these low-cost prepaid plans, Jio automatically becomes a better option. This is because the telco offers better coverage than Airtel and again would allow them to consume more data. So we believe that Jio’s low-cost prepaid plans are much better than what Airtel offers.
