India's Reliance Jio Infocomm has revealed plans to finally officially launch mobile services on Monday, offering free voice calls and heavily discounted mobile data services compared to current market prices.
As an introductory offer, customers signing up for the service - as well as existing users of the company's trial services - will be offered free voice and data services until the end of the year, the Economic Times reported.
Following this time, voice calls will remain free and data packs will be 5-10 times lower than the effective rate through rival plans currently on the market.
It has now been more than six years since the operator's parent company Reliance Industries re-entered the telecoms market by buying pan-India 4G spectrum.
While Reliance Jio launched trial 4G services in late 2015 for its employees and those of its affiliates and partners, its commercial launch has been repeatedly delayed.
The operator's 4G network currently covers 1,800 cities and towns and over 200,000 villages, according to the company. By March 2017 the operator aims to cover 90% of the nation's population.
Jio's aggressive pricing tactics have triggered a decline in the share prices of incumbent operators, due to investor fears that the operators will be dragged into another aggressive and destructive price war.