365 days in a life of a start-up seems to be of insignificant. Perhaps, this is not the case with world’s biggest start-up called ‘Jio.
Jio’s significance felt from day one, when country witness huge queue for a Jio SIM cards. Within 170 days, three letter word ‘JIO’ rocked the digital segment with fastest acquisition of 100 million subscribers base, which was the fastest adoption of any technology service, anywhere in the world – faster even than Facebook, WhatsApp or Skype. Presently, Jio has over 130 million customers on Jio network and targeting 500 million feature phone user via its newly launched 4G Jio Phone.
An analysis of Jio’s infrastructure strength, VoLTE technological advantage and data hungry Indian market only add to the advantage of Jio.
Here are some key strengths of Jio that made world’s biggest start-up a true success story in Indian Digital Segment giving run for their money to incumbent telecom operators
Jio is the only all 4G all IP network in the World: With over 100,000 sites, backed by state-of-the-art, all IP network, LTE spectrum across 800MHz, 1800MHz and 2300MHz bands, and largest fiber footprint, Jio has the widest LTE coverage in India than any other telecom player.
Jio’s network to cover 99% of India’s population and soon will have a larger 4G coverage than the 2G coverage set up over last 25 years by incumbents
Free Voice becomes a reality in India as saturated voice market moves towards data. With arrival of Jio, Mobile data consumption in India went up from 20 crore GB per month to over 150 crore GB per month. Jio customers alone are consuming 125 crore GB of that data putting Indian to No 1 position from 155 global ranking.
Streaming Video in excess of 165 crore hrs / month Voice traffic of more than 250 crore minute / day Time spent by an average Indian on mobile each week is more than 7 times time spent on TV, courtesy Jio.
Jio’s entry has changed the domestic telecom industry dynamics in a big way. Several assumptions or conventional wisdom of the past don’t hold true anymore. Jio has revolutionised the entire industry and incumbents have had to follow suit.
Data democratization – tariffs have become much more affordable having gone from between Rs. 250 – Rs. 4000 per GB at the time of Jio launch to less than Rs 50 per GB currently.
Jio users pay even lesser per GB per month with the current Rs 399 plan which offers 1 GB of high speed data per day for 84 days.
Improving Speeds: The TRAI SpeedTest portal, which officially monitors the quality of telecom networks in India, has consistently ranked Jio as the clear 4G network leader in coverage, usage and data speeds month after month. It is also evident the average speeds available to consumers today are consistently improving.
No. of Broadband Customers: As on 31st August 2016 the total wireless broadband subscribers were about 154 million. Post Jio this subscriber base has grown exponentially and as per TRAI data the wireless broadband subscriber count was over 282 million as on 30th June 2017.
Tariff Simplification: Prior to Jio there were nearly 16000 plans available to confuse consumers. Post Jio all operators are trying to replicate the Jio model by trimming the numbers of plans being offered. Jio introduced only a few simple tariff plans with just one or two plans that were considered marquee plans any point in time.
Exponential Growth of digital ecosystem: All key social media applications and content providers like facebook/ Youtube/ others have seen enhanced user base in India. India has become most active market for Google and Facebook (70 mn additions post Jio)
The launch of JioPhone to digitally empower nearly 50 crore feature phone users in India.
Jio Phone sells 6 million in one day
Sources: TRAI, Company Report and Analyst Report.
