Gandhinagar: The state government has through a resolution by the General Administrative Department (GAD) on May 6 asked the state government employees to use the Jio service and port the numbers from the ongoing Vodafone – Idea service.

“Gujarat Informatics Ltd had published a bid for fixing rates of postpaid mobile phone service for government dignitaries and officials on behalf of the General Administration Department, dated November 3, 2022. After careful consideration of the bids received from service providers, the offer of M/s. Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, Ahmedabad, has been accepted and an agreement was entered into with the said company on April 29, 2023,” a resolution stated.

After some 12 years of Vodafone-Idea service, the State government had invited bids for selecting a new operator last year. There were lot of complains regarding call dropping and lack of quality of data.

The agreement with Reliance Jio is initially for two years. The government will review the quality of the mobile phone service and tariff rates after six months and if either of them is found unsatisfactory, the agreement will be terminated.

As per the new agreement, Reliance Jio has been told to provide a new series in which the first five digits will be unique and common for all users. However, if the user wishes, the service provided may retain the existing mobile number as per the free mobile number portability scheme without charging any switchover fee. All the numbers provided by the company will be part of a closed user group as per the resolution.