Reliance Jio announced the launch of the Jio Bharat phone at a price of Rs 999 (non-refundable) with entry-level plans of Rs 123 for 28 days and Rs 1,234 for 365 days. The phone uses the Jio Bharat platform to deliver Internet-enabled services. Apart from Reliance Retail, the company is working with other partners such as Karbonn that can adopt the Jio Bharat platform to build the Jio Bharat phones. The company plans to do beta trials for its first one million phones starting July 7, 2023 across 6500 tehsils in India. It is targeting the bucket of the existing 250 million 2G phone users in the country.

Analysts say that though the feature phone price points are attractive, given the long break-even period of 15-16 months, adoption could take time. Further, Bharti Airtel was able to manage churn effectively even after a meaningful increase in entry-level recharge plans (while the competition had not increased prices), implying some stickiness within its user base. While analysts do not completely rule out a potential increase in the churn rate over time in the 2G user base, investors plan to wait and watch the success of the beta trials of the Jio Bharat phones. One thing, however, is certain: the launch will expedite the demise of Vodafone Idea.