Reliance Jio Infocomm has added 100 million subscribers on its network, in less than six months of the launch of its mobile telephony services, which introduced a barrage of free data and voice offerings in order to grab the market share.
Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man and Chairman of Reliance Industries – the parent company of Reliance Jio, said on Tuesday that Reliance Jio was launched on September 5. “Today, just 170 days later, Jio has crossed 100 million customer mark on its 4g LTE all-IP wireless broadband network,” Ambani said. Jio has added nearly seven customers every second for every day since the launch, he added.
Reliance Industries, India’s largest business conglomerate, launched its much awaited telecommunication venture Reliance Jio Infocomm last year with a whopping Rs 1.5 trillion investments to start with, mainly in building high-speed internet infrastructure over the new 4G/LTE network across the entire country. It topped it up with an announcement of a further investment of Rs 30,000 crore in December.
Reliance Jio has said it has been adding 600,000 new users per day had already added 72.4 million customers as on December 31 on its network since launch in a hyper competitive market.
Reliance Jio’s entry into the telecom space has forced the incumbent players to relook at their market positions and consolidate their operations to survive the competition. Vodafone India and Idea Cellular have said that the two companies are in talks to merge their operations, and are learnt to be looking to seal the deal in a month.
On the other hand, Tata Teleservices is reported to be mulling joining the planned R-Comm-Aircel-MTS combine. The proposed merger, if it sails through, would make it the third largest operator in the rejigged order, far behind Idea-Vodafone combine, and very close to Bharti Airtel, in terms of the number of subscribers. Vodafone India has 205 million users, Idea Cellular has 190 million and Bharti Airtel has 266 million, while Tata-Tele-R-Comm-Aircel-MTS would have about 260 million put together.
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Reliance Jio has led to the established operators drastically cut tariffs – as much as by 66% – in order to retain their customer base, and has put the entire sector under tremendous pressure of choosing between protecting margins and user base. Reliance Jio recently extended its inaugural free voice and data plan till March 31 drawing complaints and criticisms from its biggest rivals Airtel, Vodafone and Idea, who assert that its anti-competitive practices and freebies are hurting the industry. Vodafone earlier went as far as to write down the value of its India business on hyper competition from the new entrant.