Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio network is stated as the largest startup in the world. The numbers prove it all even before the commercial public launch. When Jio service was launched on December 28th, 2015, only its employees and their relatives got to use the cutting-edge service through an invite-based system to try the service. As of now the network boasts 7 lakh users and is currently giving hiccups to other service providers.
The user-base of Jio’s platform recorded huge numbers since its trial launch to the public. A considerable 13 PB/ month of data has been generated since Reliance Jio launch in India. Interestingly, Airtel, once agiain, tops the charts in terms of data consumption and recorded 45 PB/month of data consumption. It must be noted that according to a field trial conducted by Foreign broker Credit Suisse, Jio’s speed was 7-15 times faster than other 4G providers and its network coverage was also applaudable.
Apart from that Airtel has a fair share of the market in mobile service provider category according to a report by TRAI. Airtel holds the top position with 24.31% of wireless subscriber base in India followed by Vodafone capturing 19.15% of the wireless subscriber base, idea accumulating 16.94% of market and Reliance capturing 9.91% of the market. Despite that, Jio service that provided LTE network has become a fierce competitor in the LTE market.
The company is aiming at a 100; capturing 100 million subscribers and 100 PB of data consumption in a month within a year of its commercial launch. The aspirations are undying as the Mukesh Ambani’s company is currently looking to increase its subscriber base from 700,000 to 2.5 million and data consumption to 50 PB in a month before its commercial launch.
Reliance Jio can be considered as a nitro boost for Reliance Industries as the quarterly results of the industry were not up to the expectations. The major business for the industry was petrochemicals and refining but the analysts weren’t quite impressed by the numbers.
Citing the average data consumption of a subscriber, Jio recorded a mammoth 18.5 GB of data consumption per subscriber per month, whereas Airtel recorded 0.81 GB of data consumption in a month, followed by Vodafone at 0.59 GB.
55 million Airtel subscribers in Q1 2016 recorded 45 PB of data usage followed by Vodafone whose 47 million users consumed 28 PB of data in the time period. The noticeable fact is that Jio’s 700,000 consumer base consumed 13 PB of high-speed data during that given time period. Reliance is currently running Jio’s network trial base among its users and above that it’s providing unlimited 4G data scheme to its customers whereas other service providers also provide 2G and 3G data whose consumption rate is not much due to lack of speeds compared to the 4G.
Jammu and Kashmir recorded the highest 5.88 PB of data consumption followed by other states in India. Data consumption through voice and calls was also considerable as an average 25 mins per day voice usage was recorded.
Final thought
The adoption rate of Jio’s network is positive signs for the industry as a huge market is awaiting its commercial launch. The internet penetration in India is still crawling near 22.16% mark and the rising LTE penetration and LTE-enabled smartphones will surely give a boost to the service providers.
In spite of only 22% internet penetration, the Internet user base recorded a 40% growth in 2015 compared to previous year. Smartphone growth in 2016 is expected to surge by 29% in 2016 and still 83% of the Indians are void of smartphones thus posing a huge window of opportunities for service providers. By June 2016, it is estimated that of the total 471 million Internet users in India, 371 million will access through the mobile platform.
The thunderous success of Reliance Jio smartphones that were launched recently has surely given a ray of hope to the Reliance industries and especially Jio network. Jio Lyf smartphone which debuted not long ago gave a shock to the other manufacturers by capturing the 5th spot among the smartphone manufacturers.
Lastly, The budding smartphone market in India will, in turn, boost the LTE adoption rate as majority of smartphones shipping in the future will have LTE capabilities. Thus, there is a huge window of opportunity for service providers especially Jio network as it showed a promising start.
