Agree with you mate, however its also marketing, as people tend to buy what they see and get. I had used jio sim and at times it shows full signal, however when we try to call from other operators we get out of network coverage, i don't want to comment on who is at the fault here.Remember they aren't talking about overall subscriber count. The article says they gained 8m subscribers in April month alone. And it's mainly due to the fact that Airtel and VF have introduced the mandatory minimum recharge packs.
Think about the lower middle class, lower class and BPL people. Their mindset would be like, "instead of spending rs.35 for nothing i can spend rs.49 for unlimited calls"
We need to relate this spike in subscriber base with the fact that the Jio phone was the best selling feature phone in the Q4 of 2018 and also Q1 of 2019. There's still a huge customer base of around 400m in feature phone market, and i wouldn't be surprised if they move to jio in coming days because of this ridiculous "mandatory recharge" fiasco
Airtel/Voda/Idea should come up with new idea instead of asking people to recharge for 35 to keep active.