Vodafone Complains Jio Phone Will Wipe Away All Revenues
Jio Added More Users in June Than Airtel, Vodafone Combined!
Some quite interesting news, views and opinions are coming in regarding Reliance Jio’s onslaught and continued aggressive plans related to their complete disruption.
While competitors like Vodafone are clearly scared, and they have not hidden their anxiousness, especially regarding Jio Phone, and its effect on the overall telecom revenues in India. Interestingly, TRAI has released data, which states that Jio was able to add more users, compared to both Airtel and Vodafone combined, for the month of June.
Vodafone: Jio Will Wipe Away All Revenues
Vodafone has written a letter to Telecom Commission member (finance) Anuradha Mitra, wherein they have expressed their fear and apprehensions, related to Jio’s aggressive pricing, and their plans to disrupt the hardware market with Jio phone.
Vodafone has said, “..the new operator continues to aggressively under- price its services, including announcing launch of ‘Effective Zero Price Feature Phone’ with unlimited voice. This is likely to cause further erosion in revenue for existing operators,”
As a solution, Vodafone has requested to lower the interest levied on spectrum payments from 10% to 6.24%-6.5% on deferred payments. Besides, due to lower revenues and high costs due to Jio’s free plans, Vodafone has also sought discount on Universal Service Obligation Fund from 5% to 3%.
TRAI: Jio Added More Users Than Airtel + Vodafone Combined
As per TRAI’s latest data, Jio added 6 million new users in the month of June, which is more than what Airtel and Vodafone added in the same period. While Airtel managed to add 2 million new users, Vodafone added less than 1 million new users.
This way, Jio managed to churn out a growth rate of 5.14%, compared to 0.74% recorded by Airtel.
After this new addition, Jio now commands 10.39% market share in wireless connections, while Airtel is still at #1 with 23.65% share. Vodafone is still at #2 position with 17.86% share and Idea holds 16.54% share.
TRAI informed that the total number wireless service users, which includes GSM, CDMA & LTE is now at 1,186.84 million at June, 30th, 2017. Comparably, this number stood at 1,180.82 million at the end of May, 2017, which means a monthly growth rate of 0.51% was achieved, overall.
