Reliance Jio created an uproar in the market at the time it was unveiled and continues to be a hot topic thanks to its disruptive prices and promises. The prepaid and postpaid plans are extremely attractive and Jio has given hope to the residents of India that internet can be high quality and affordable at the same time.
Reliance Jio had set a target of 100 million subscribers by this year end, however the company has already fallen behind its target by almost 50%. Although the monthly acquisitions are falling behind, the company has increased its target from 100 million to 250 million by the end of 2016.
Jio is adding 5 Lakh customers every day, which is half of what Jio had forecasted. The ‘Welcome Offer’ has definitely aided the company in adding more customers and this is what has propelled the company to increase its forecast for the year end.
To increase its subscriber base by 2.5X by this year end, the company has decided to partner with a few companies like Samsung, Juniper Networks, Cisco and Ericsson to increase the capacity of its network. We all know that as the subscriber base increases, the service quality drops.
To maintain the quality of data speeds, voice and texts the company has planned to expand its network in a similar speed so as to compensate for the huge subscriber base. Samsung and other companies will build towers for Jio to handle the traffic.
Will Reliance be able to reach this target?
We have been seeing long lines outside Reliance stores selling Jio sim cards, with some stores having a waiting time of more than 2 months! The infrastructure in place isn’t compatible with such a huge subscriber base yet and some users have cited slower speeds and call drops major problems.
Infact, in our tests, the data speeds of Jio have literally come down by 10X in last 2 months and especially in last 2-3 weeks after Jio launched their services commercially!
Provided Jio customer base is not increasing at the expected rate, the company will have to do something magical to reach the target set. It does look extremely difficult to reach, but the craze for Jio isn’t dying down and we might just be able to see this happening in another 3 months.
If Reliance Jio reaches the 250 million subscriber milestone, it will become the second largest telco in India after Bharti Airtel. That is a huge feat, considering Vodafone and Idea Cellular have been in business for as long as we can remember.
However before all this, Reliance Jio has to sort out the issues with lack of sim cards and less supply for an overwhelming demand. If users don’t get to use the Welcome Offer, it won’t make much sense to set such unrealistic milestones.
Source: Hindu
