Reliance Jio has long been perceived as the catalyst to the next revolution in the Indian telecom market. With its ultra low-cost data plans and schemes like free voice calls for lifetime and free 4G data up to 4GB under its Welcome Offer, Reliance Jio has been aiming to instantly gain 100 million subscribers. And as expected, it was met with an overwhelming response from users across the country. The operator seems to continue to grow in popularity despite some grave concerns about the call drops and declining data speeds. Now, a report by global financial services company Credit Suisse says Reliance Jio has a data traffic of 16,000TB per day as compared to China Mobile’s 12,000TB and Vodafone Global’s 6,000TB data per day. India’s top telecom operator Airtel stands at 2,000TB per day data traffic.
In terms of sheer data volume, Reliance Jio has become one of the top telecom operators in the world, reports Economic Times. Do remember, Reliance Jio hasn’t officially announced these figures. Credit Suisse also commented on declining 4G speeds of Reliance Jio. The brokerage said slowing Jio 4G network “is understandable” as the operator is “getting stress-tested.” Reliance Jio had revealed that it had gained 16 million new subscribers within a month of the commercial roll out. Jio says it adds 0.6 million to 1.1 million customers a day every day. A couple of months ago, Reliance Jio had reported that its network sees consumption of 26GB data per person as of June-end. Though at the time, Jio had just 15 lakh customers.
Reliance Jio’s massive data traffic can also be attributed to the free data offers it has been giving out. The company was offering unlimited free data with select handsets under the Preview Offer and later it extended the same, though a cap of 4GB per day, with the Welcome Offer. The 4GB data is still very high for a daily cap considering a lot of users have 1GB or 2GB monthly data plans. Offers like free data and voice calls have been biggest draw for Reliance Jio. But it will be interesting to see whether Reliance Jio sees the same amount data traffic on its network once the free offer is over.
Even as Reliance Jio is amassing big numbers, the operator hasn’t been really able to cope up with massive data traffic. According to a recent Ookla speed test report, Reliance Jio has seen a downward trend in average data speed. Shortly after the Ookla report, TRAI’s report on its website revealed Jio was offering the slowest 4G data speeds. According to the TRAI data, Airtel has the maximum average 4G download speed at 11.4Mbps while Jio delivers an average speed of 6.2Mbps. Idea is at third spot with 7.6Mbps speed while Vodafone offers an average speed of 7.3Mbps.
Reliance Jio has however turned down these reports about the declining data speeds. “With reference to statistics published TRAI’s analytics website, we have performed an internal analysis of the same. Based on this analysis, we believe that the comparison of Jio speeds with other operators has an inherent bias against Jio data usage. Historically, we have observed that a disproportionate number of speed tests are performed once the FUP comes into effect. This is so since most users don’t consider performing the test until they observe a deterioration of speed. Such users also tend to perform multiple tests until full speeds are restored,” Reliance Jio had said in a statement.
Another problem that Reliance Jio has continue to grapple with is interconnect issue, which has caused massive call drops on its network. In a major relief to the newcomer, the regulator TRAI has floated a consultation paper to resolve issues related to point of interconnection between Reliance Jio and other telecom operators.
0 comments: