Why Jio Will Find It Difficult To Scale Scale Subscribers & Revenue?

Jio from technology point of view is a disruptor in the market by bring-ing in not only some of the latest technologies in the country but also attempting to make data take precedence over voice.

- Faisal Kawoosa

 

This goes directly against the market tide where voice is still the main revenue contributor across operators. Now, there is a fundamental question that we should ask before adjudging the success or otherwise of Jio. Jio is all about data and going by what we are witnessing so far, it seems to believe that giving abundant of data at very affordable, in fact throw away prices (if we consider `303 plan offering 30 GB data), is going to pull everyone on to Jio. Now lets examine if there are enough of users in the country that can make Jio successful with its business plan execution.

As per the latest Nokia MBiT Index 2017, there are 125 million mobile broadband subscribers in the country who are accessing Internet over smartphones over 3G and/or 4G networks. The average monthly usage of these users is 849 MB and 1.4 GB for 3G and 4G networks respectively.