The 3G Binge, And A 4G Bloodbath!

Is it really RJio vs rest of telcos in India? The big picture

- Deepak Kumar

Three years ago, Reliance Jio Infocomm had not launched its services and its launch dates were speculative at best. Yet, it was still very much clear that the greenfield behemoth was going to have a VoLTE engine in place for all of its 4G networks. It was also evident that since there was no legacy baggage to deal with, RJio would be using an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture to build the networks.

It was, therefore, surprising to see that the incumbents were not panicking. Yes, they did think of RJio as a serious competitor, but that was it; they never really saw it as potentially massively disruptive powerhouse. They did have a defense plan in place, but they did not seem to feel the need to go with an all-out offensive beforehand. On the contrary, the general mood was the RJio threat could be managed by upgrading to a matching network and architecture ‘just in time’.

As time has shown, the incumbents grossly misjudged, and eventually, were taken by the surprise in varying degrees. There just has been no time to be just-in-time.

The genesis of consolidation

The industry has hopefully learnt it the hard way that there is a big difference between being launch-ready and actually launching. As one is witnessing now, that difference could become a matter of survival and existence.

The industry was expected to have known, from the past numerous experiences, that in a mostly prepaid market like India, it takes only a few freebies for customers to switch operators. True, customers have also been known to switch back when the freebies end, but then history is not bound to always repeat itself. With the financial muscles of RJio being in the fray, the likelihood of customers being swept away was real enough at the very outset.