Reliance Jio Infocomm, a new entrant in the 4G market, on Sunday claimed that it has created a world record by crossing the 16 million subscriber mark within a month of launching its commercial operations on September 5. This growth is faster than any other telecom operator or startup in the world, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Skype. Jio and Reliance Retail are units of Reliance Industries.
Mukesh Ambani launched Jio operations for its employees and partners in late December 2015, and subsequently rolled out Jio preview offer for owners of its sister company Reliance Retail’s LYF phones offering them free voice and data services for three months. Initially Jio SIMs were not compatible with most of the smartphone brands.
The preview offer was later expanded for all smartphone users, before Jio started commercial services on September 5 with a ‘welcome offer’ which now offered free voice and unlimited 4G data until December 31. The Jio SIM will also included free voice calling, and no roaming charges.
Jio’s premium apps like JioMusic, MyJio, JioChat, JioMoney etc are also free until December 31. Mukesh Ambani has claimed that Jio’s data plans will be the cheapest in the world starting at Rs 50/GB.
Mr. Mukesh D. Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), said, “We are delighted and humbled by the overwhelming response across India to the Jio Welcome Offer. Jio is built to empower every Indian with the power of data. We are delighted that people have recognized this and are utilizing our services to the fullest. We are customer-obsessed and committed to improve every day to exceed expectations of our customers.”
According to Mukesh Ambani, his new telecom venture aims at acquiring 100 million customers “in the shortest possible time and create a new world record”. In other words, this would mean a data usage of 250 crore gigabyte per month.
Jio has surpassed all the age-old paperwork by introducing Aadhaar-based Jio SIM activation across 3,100 cities and towns. This enables the customer to complete the SIM activation process with only his/her Aadhaar Card number.
Post the announcement of Jio free voice and data services, rivals such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular introduced their own lucrative offers by cutting down data rates to counter competition. They have also increased their own 4G spectrum holdings to have a better take than Jio in the market.
Currently, the market leader is Airtel has over 257 million users, followed by Vodafone with 200 million, Idea with 177 million.
Athough, the real test will be when Jio starts charging for its services from next year.
