Railways dials Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel for 1.1 million connections

Due to the expansion in size of subscribers, the tariffs finalised under the latest policy are about 10 per cent lower than the previous rates charged by Jio

Telecom giants Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel will provide new mobile connections to 1.1 million employees of Indian Railways across the country, after the two emerged as lowest bidders in the national transporter’s expansion of the closed user group (CUG) scheme, Business Standard has learnt.

According to official documents, Jio will provide 728,000 SIM cards for a contract value of Rs 126 crore, while Airtel will supply 485,000 sim cards for Rs 84 crore. Airtel had emerged as the second-lowest bidder for the order, and got the contract after matching the bid of Jio, which was the lowest bidder.

Last year,