The Purchase!!
After a lot of waiting, I received an email in the middle of the night from Jio offering their wifi / MiFi device with the most sought after sim card, the Reliance Jio prepaid sim card with Jio 4G preview offer. I was in front of the Reliance digital store early morning at 10:30 am. I noticed 2 sign boards outside the shop stating opening time as 10 am and 11am. So I just waited for the shop to open at 11 am.
At 11:00.00 Am the shop shutters opened. I went in and asked for the JioFi device. and the salesman just handed over a small blue colored box to me.
I was then led to a separate billing counter setup just for sales of the wifi device. They used a mobile phone camera and an app to prepare the bill. I was then led to another counter where the person at the counter provided me with a sim activation form. He reminded me that this needs to be carefully filled and no mistakes/ overwriting/ scratching will be accepted. After I was done, the sales guy checked and started filling the missing fields himself where he made a mistake and had to get another form. He then asked me to only sign the form in two places and once across my photo and he will fill up the rest of the form himself. I was told that the sim will activate in maximum 48 hours.
The Review
The device charges using the standard micro usb port which is good.
The device supports connecting using WPS.
The device comes with a micro sim adapter which I did not need. The Jio sim card comes with three pre cuts so you can use it as a sim, micro sim or a nano sim.
Strangely, the device also comes with a good quality micro usb charger which is rated 5V 1A and can be used to charge your phone also.
They also provided a set of jio stickers.
The remaining review to follow after the sim gets activated!!!
Update after 48 hours: The sim has no signs of life yet.
Update after72 hours: The sim has not been activated yet. Feeling disappointed now.
Third day morning, I went to the reliance store where I bought the device. After sweet talk didn't work, a few threats of escalation worked. The employee took a note of my name and the jio number and assured me that it will activate by afternoon.
Third day afternoon, I received the message that my sim is ready for tele verification.
I tried to call the tele verification number but they are facing such high call volumes. I keep getting a message that they are experiencing system issues and I will need to call them back.
Later that night I could connect to that number and after multiple attempts I could get the data services activated.
4 th day: I am just amazed by the quality of the jio apps. They have just taken care of everything for us. You can listen to any song. Watch any movie, tv episode, even live tv.
Initially the account shows that you have 2 GB data. But I consumed that data in just 12 hours. :-)
5th day: finally managed to get voice services activated. Voice clarity is good. But trying to call anyone is still a difficult task. I keep getting the route is busy message. I got through once, and the call dropped after 9 minutes of talk. And then again I couldn't call that person.
