Reliance Jio - The First-hand experience

Reliance JIO, the new entrant in Indian telecom sector has created buzz like never before. Even before going live commercially without spending much on advertisement it has got on nerves of other service providers. Rolling out of preview offer of all its services including premium ones and word of mouth publicity has worked for Reliance JIO in perfect way.

I got access to Reliance JIO last Saturday and been on it since then and trying all apps along with its data services. I enabled Jion network as hotspot and connected 2 cellphones and 1 laptop with it and didn't find any data speed slowness issue. The Speed is better than other service provider like Airtel, but that is not only thing that makes JIO different. It has come up with some amazing apps for different purpose under its My JIO app. Jio Cinema for HD Movies, Jio Beats for Music, Jio Play for Online TV, JioXpress for News, Jio Mags for Online Magazine, Jio Drive for Online free storage, Jio Net for accessing its hotspot data, Jio money for Online wallet, Jio Join for Call and Chat. I tried almost all of its apps except Jio Join and Jio Money and must say that I loved few of those.

JioCinema has Movie collection in HD version and with many languages and categorized in different ways. It has movies form old era to 90s to latest released and when I watched few of those movies it played without buffering. It keeps track of movies you play so that you can resume playing it once you get time.

Jio Play has more than 250 TV channels online all of which you can access free for time being except few sports channels that needs Hotstar premium account. It also keeps history of last week shows that you can watch anytime. I played CNBC TV18 for continuous 3 hrs and didn’t see any lag in live streaming. It has channels in various languages to cater need of people from all regions.

Jio Beats is one app that I loved the most purely because of amazing content it possesses. It is online music playing app along with curated Radio. The category of Songs it has is really amazing with songs ranging from 50s and 60s till latest hits in different languages and genre, all categorized in simple way for anyone to access. It also gives you access to a good collection of Indian classical music from almost all world renowned artists like Ustad Bismillah Khan, Pandit Jasraj and Zakir Hussain. It has Sufi music, it has Qawwali, it has music for kids, music for dance, music for travelling and so many, all categorized properly for easy access and navigation. One can create playlist and download songs to play offline.

It's not about fast speed and less cost. Look at the superb curated collection #JioBeats has #Jio4G pic.twitter.com/0QxDh4Vgey

— Half Plate Momos (@adult_kid) August 29, 2016

Kuch toh log kahenge, logon ka kaam hai kahna... #JioBeats .. Free Reliance Gio rocks :) pic.twitter.com/LlXcd42i8X

— Half Plate Momos (@adult_kid) August 29, 2016

JioMags gives access to various online Magazines like Femina, FilmFare , Business today. Once you download a Magzine you can read it anytime. JioXpress opens up world of online news for users with access to curated news that can be customized easily by users too. JioNet gives you access to use JIO’s hotspot that are there at various places within cities. JioDrive gives you access to 100 GB of free cloud storage for anytime access. 

With such reasonable pricing and such vast content satisfying needs of different type of users, I think JIO is here to stay for longer run. Reliance Industries has spent almost 1.5 Lakh Crore Rupees for Jio so I hope they won’t leave any stone unturned to make it a grand and sustainable success.

And YES , Enjoy Everything Free…. Only if you get access to a Jio Sim :)

Going down the Memory lane - The Trip It was

Writing about past holiday or vacation trips is so nostalgic, no?  Especially when you have had some of the best moments of your life in that trip and for me it was no different. Now Before i start sharing about that one trip and get into nostalgia let me point out that there are many aspects one has to keep in mind and one of the most important is “less budget” when it comes to going on a trip in college time. I had one such trip during last days of my college life and just before our final exams ( yes you read it right :) )

Let me share it from beginning on how it was planned to how it panned out. It was in April of 2009, our last year in college in Lucknow when we 9 friends planned for a trip before exam and before we get separated. We planned for short 2 days trip to Uttrakhand which was about 400 KMs from Lucknow. We had planned to view Purnagiri temple and some other hill areas nearby and while returning to Lucknow we had planned to see nearby places if time permitted. We hired an Inova car that was good enough for 9 of us and started the journey from Lucknow taking all friends on-board one by one. As few of us were not staying with family, rest of the friends brought some food that would be used if needed and with playing some religious songs in car we started the journey in dark summer night of April.

We started the journey from within the city at around 10 PM and after 1 hour we were on highway but just to meet some massive traffic jam because of heavy trucks. In hot summer it was getting intolerable to sit in car just to see it crawling but as it was our first and may be last trip we didn’t feel much bothered. As few of our friends were smokers, very soon we halted for some tea and smoke to relieve ourselves. After few kilometers the highway was clear and the cool wind kissing our face made us immensely comfortable. Travelling in dark in night with moon on top and cool wind blowing was one hell of a bliss feeling.

We reached to base of Purnagiri Hill next day morning and fell in aww of the scenes around that was full of greenery, clean fountain water and sky without sunshine. The April season was not the best season to go there as it does rain many times because of it being hill area and it was no surprise for us.  We decided to go to other side of base of hill with Car and driving slowly over slops and overflowing water we reached that side. It was around 10 AM and after breakfast we decided to go up for temple visit, the main place for our trip. It was about 10 KMs round ways full of stones and full of water over flowing from small fountains. We made it to top with more than 10 stoppages and got spent good time there as crowd was less. We spent around 6-7 hours there relaxing and viewing the scenery and trust be it was nothing less than feeling of bliss.

We decided to leave from there in night time only so that we can beat morning traffic and see some other places. As we were still on top of hill we started to come down in evening around 7 PM in dark with help of torch lights and sticks.I can still not forget the horror and feeling adrenaline rush of those 4-5 hrs. We managed to come down safely and after some rest and food left from the place.We were on highway back again but just to see our trouble time getting started with Car. Tyre got flat more than 6 times and with no service around we had to mange it somehow which consumed all of our time. Each time tyre got flat, one person had to go with Driver to make it repair while rest of us lied on roads or went into near by farm land and villages.It made the trip bit awkward but as friends were around it turned out to be more fun. In night time we reached our home full tired and busted into bed within no time. 

I am planning one more trip to same place with new/old friends just to relive memory of those days, this time probably with Domestic Airlines  as I am staying in Bangalore and distance is too much to travel by train.