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4G / LTE / Airtel's Sunil Mittal Poor Math helping Jio Gain Subscribers

« Last post by wiredlife on April 19, 2018, 03:07:19 PM »

Early this year, Jio (not covered) had come up with new plans which effectively decreased tariffs to a new low, reversing its own earlier trend of increasing tariffs. The down-trading of tariffs is likely to be more negative for incumbents compared to Jio itself. Reasons are twofold. First, Jio has been increasing customers at a rate of c7-8m per month; against this, incumbents are increasing subscribers at a rate of c1-1.5m. As such impact of lower ARPU may see some offset because of higher growth in subs for Jio but this may not be the case for incumbents. Other than that, Jio collects INR99 as a prime membership fees from its new subscribers and this may limit ARPU downside for Jio this quarter.

Technology / Cloud Migration - Amazon Vs IBM / Oracle / Microsoft

« Last post by wiredlife on April 19, 2018, 01:21:36 PM »

Amazon has not gone far enough to acknowledge enterprises' need to make a gradual move from on-premises, data center-based IT operations to cloud-based operations. And the company?s insistence that customers go all-in could hinder progress by giving it a reputation for being too cloud-centric with a lift and shift mentality.

Amazon's rivals, including Microsoft, IBM and Oracle, are able to resonate with customers' operations teams looking to make gradual moves to the cloud, initially through private/hybrid cloud scenarios. Amazon is already at a disadvantage compared to traditional software providers with their mature professional services organizations. The company relies heavily on partners to provide customers with support for digital transformation projects that require on-premises data center support and verticalized, specific use case solutions.

Amazon needs to lower the barriers to cloud adoption by pre-building as much functionality as it can for specific use cases to the benefit of both customers and channel partners. Otherwise it will lose out to closest cloud rivals Google and Microsoft.

Web 2.0 / The industrialization of digital commences at Accenture

« Last post by wiredlife on December 22, 2017, 11:04:10 AM »

Accenture management indicated commencement of industrialization of digital services and increase in size of digital projects. It will be interesting to see if clients segregate large digital projects and work with a number of niche vendors or opt for scale vendors with a track-record of delivering complex integration projects. Select Indian IT companies may benefit if the latter materializes.

While Indian IT has been a late entrant in digital, the companies have stepped up investments and gained momentum in the recent quarters. It remains to be seen whether Indian IT capitalizes on industrialization theme and if it results in growth acceleration in FY2019.

4G / LTE / Jio Users Consume 7x Data Volume of Airtel

« Last post by wiredlife on October 31, 2017, 02:09:46 PM »

Jio Data usage per subscriber was robust 9.6GB/month vs. 3GB/month on the top incumbent's network. Jio's data volumes on the network were ~7x Airtel's data volumes. Minutes of usage per subscriber per month were 626, 1.2x that of the top incumbents.

RJio added 15mn subscribers in the quarter ending September 2017. RJio suggested that most of the users are on the Rs399 or higher plan. Customer churn is at 1% per month, and the company expects it to diminish further. Call drop rate has been <0.4% with 100% network availability time. According to TRAI, Jio has 18Mbps download speed on the network.

With ~160mn 4G smartphones currently in the market, Jio has 85% market share there.

4G / LTE / Jio Increases Addressable market with feature Phone Launch

« Last post by wiredlife on October 10, 2017, 07:22:06 AM »

Reliance Jio launched its much-awaited 4G feature phone The device is priced at INR1500, collected as a fully refundable deposit, refundable at the end of three years. The phone has a 2.4" QVGA screen, bundled Jio apps and will not be compatible with non-Jio SIMs.

The company is targeting shipments of 5mn phones/week. The monthly plan for INR153 would offer unlimited voice/SMS and 0.5GB of data per day. There are two sachet plans for INR24 and INR54 with validity of two and seven days respectively. The phone can be connected to TV through a Jio Phone cable. However, this will require enrollment to the INR309/month plan (1GB/day allowance) which will allow 3-4 hours of daily video streaming.

In addition, it was also limited in addressing the lower ARPU customer who are feature phone users (installed based >500mn). We believe that the launch of 4G feature phone and investing in developing this ecosystem will increase the addressable market for R Jio significantly. The company is also planning to increase its network coverage to >95% by Mar-18 from >80% at present.

4G / LTE / Idea 4G Expansion Slower than Expected

« Last post by wiredlife on October 04, 2017, 02:15:23 PM »

Idea Cellular's progress on 4G rollout has been slower than expected. We understand that Idea has spread its 4G network across circles, which means that its established circles do not have sufficient 4G coverage to prevent subscriber churn to other networks. Spiralling debt burden (interest almost equal to Ebitda in the worst quarters) for Vodafone and Idea would inhibit capex unless there is equity infusion or monetisation through tower sale. Even after the merger is completed, integration issues are likely in the initial stages.

We understand that Idea and Vodafone are committed to infusing equity if certain debt thresholds are breached, as per their agreement. Also that doing capex in haste means losing value after the merger assuming that capacity synergies start to come through over time. Even after the merger is completed, integration issues are likely as Idea/Vodafone have different vendors for 2G, 3G, and 4G in various circles.

SmartPhones & Apps / Jio Phone Complete Hardware Specification

« Last post by wiredlife on October 04, 2017, 02:02:23 PM »

The Rs 1,500 JioPhone specifications is as under after having used and unboxed the same.

Network Technology True 4G (LTE Support): VoLTE (HD Voice Call), Video call support

LTE Bands Supported: BAND3(1800)/BAND5(850) LTE?TDD BAND40(2300)

Display Screen Size: 6.09cm (2.4inch); Screen Type: TFT screen; Screen Resolution: QVGA (320 x 240)

Connectivity Wi?Fi: 802.11 b/g/n; Bluetooth: BT 4.1 with BLE; GPS: Yes; USB Connectivity: USB 2; NFC: Yes

Platform Operating System: KAI OS; CPU: 1GHz Dual core Processor

Battery Capacity: 2000 mAh, Li?ion; Talktime: Upto 12 Hours; Standby Time: Upto 15 Days

Memory Internal Memory: 4GB, RAM: 512MB; Expandable: Upto 128GB

Camera Rear Camera: 2MP; Front Camera: 0.3MP; Video Recording: Yes

Multimedia Music Player: Yes; Wireless FM Radio: Yes; Video Player: Yes; Loudspeaker: Yes; Alert Type: Ringtone + Vibration

Apps Support Jio Apps: MyJio, JioMusic, JioTV, JioCinema, JioXpressNews, HelloJio, JioVideoCall, JioShare, JioGames etc.
JioStore: More apps can be downloaded from JioStore app

Features Hello Jio: Your personal Voice Assistant with voice enabled search (English, Hindi) Compose SMS, Search on Google, Open app, call contact and much more

Connect To TV: Connect to CRT TV, Smart TV etc using JioMediaCable (to be bought as separate accessory)

Browser: 4G internet browsing

Other features: Torch, calculator, alarm, calendar, gallery etc.
Box Contents Handset, Removable Battery, Charger Adaptor, Jio SIM CARD
Other Details SIM Slot: Single SIM
SIM Size: Nano Sim (4FF type)
Color: Black
Indian Language Support 22 Indian languages? Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri , Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili,
Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu

Other Compatible Accessories - Charger with 5V, 700 mA rating; Standard 3.5mm jack for audio; JioMediaCable; JioFi for wifi access

4G / LTE / JIO unlikely to cut prices despite IUC cut

« Last post by wiredlife on September 27, 2017, 11:43:51 AM »

JIO has been paying IUC of ~Rs6bn per month in its largely urban network with smartphone subscribers. With this cut, JIO?s IUC net
outflow to the rest of the telcos will fall sharply. Whether JIO ploughs back these gains or retains them would depend on a number of factors.

JIO?s smartphone plans are at a deep discount to the market, but its feature phone plan is on par or even at a premium to the ARPU of featurephone users. One can argue that JIO can gun for higher market share at a faster pace by cutting prices, and one that objective is achieved, attempt to take prices up gradually. Indeed, JIO?s entire strategy has been based on this ? a steeply discounted entry followed by consolidation.

Further, JIO's (largely urban) network utilisation is quite substantial. Demand has proved to be robust with subscriber adds of more than 5m per month consistently even after a recent tariff hike ? these two factors hardly paint a circumstance in which JIO will gain by dropping prices. Incremental rollout is going to be largely towards the rural/featurephone offering.

In rural areas, JIO?s feature-phone push is likely to be constrained by handset supply. We understand that JIO is attempting to raise
manufacturing capacity anticipating healthy demand, and this at the announced price of Rs153/28 days pack that offers 0.5GB/day and
unlimited voice. It is possible that JIO could introduce a lower denomination pack later to expand the addressable feature phone
market, but supply constraints will make this a lesser priority.

Technology / Most Promising Online Payment Startups

« Last post by wiredlife on August 30, 2017, 01:52:02 PM »

We believe traditional merchant acquirers will lose online payments share to acquirers like PayPal, Adyen, Stripe, and Wirecard who have more advanced technology solutions and who serve more online-first merchants.

We have other startups like Affirm and Klarna are seeking to reduce friction and transform retail lending online.

We believe scaling a presence in peer-to-peer (C2C) payments will be of greatest value in emerging markets given a large under-banked population and lack of tech-enabled banking, as it can establish a user base upon which a larger payment presence can be built. We have seen this play out with mobile money transfers in the past 10 years, and believe China and India are well down this road. In the United States, Venmo has successfully built a loyal millennial user base that can be monetized in the future.

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FTTH Broadband / Broadband Subscribers in India at 422 Mn

« Last post by wiredlife on July 31, 2017, 11:26:55 AM »

The Minister for Communications informed that based on information provided by TRAI, as on March 31, 2017 there were 422.2 mn broadband users in India and internet penetration was at 32.9%.

The National Telecom Policy 2012 aims to have 600 mn broadband connections by 2020. Under the BharatNet project, the government aims to provide 100 Mbps broadband connectivity to 0.25 mn village administrations (Gram Panchayat) by March 2019. As on July 23, 2017, optical fiber cables has been laid in 0.1 mn gram panchayats and broadband connectivity has been provided in 25, 426 gram panchayats