"We welcome Reliance Jio's entry to the digital world and wish them the very best. We also welcome Jio's call to leading operators to work together. As a responsible operator, we will fulfil all our regulatory obligations as we have always done," Airtel said in a statement.
"Over the last 20 years, Airtel has been contributing towards building a digitally enabled India and remains fully committed to and take leadership in supporting the government's Digital India vision. We will continue to innovate and deliver best-in-class products and services to our customers," the statement added.
Taking the tariff war and competition in India's telecom space to a new level, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani on Thursday said domestic voice calls on the Jio network will be free forever, and unveiled a four-month introductory offer of free voice and data services.
"The era of paying for voice calls is ending," Ambani told the Annual General Meeting of Reliance Industries (RIL) in Mumbai. "No Jio customer will ever have to pay for voice calls again," he added.
In effect, the announcements on Thursday point to a commercial launch from January 1 next year even though no specific mention was made in this regard.
This was also keenly awaited since Reliance Industries has invested as much as US$21 billion in Jio -- its largest ever capital expenditure on a single project.
