During the quarter, JIO announced Jio happy new year offer effective 4 Dec 2016, with free voice and data until 31 March 2017.
JIO has 72.4mn subscribers on its network now, as on 31 Dec 2016, and it is on track to hit 100mn subscribers by March 2017.
Management said it continues to face interconnect issues with incumbent telcos. Telcos have not provided adequate PoIs, which is
adversely affecting the quality of services for JIO consumers.
JIO had cut daily data usage limit from 4GB to 1GB in December and there are anecdotes about many users having taken multiple SIMs to circumvent this. Given that there could be a large fall in subscriber count when JIO goes priced.
JIO is working with handset vendors to launch VoLTE feature phones at around the Rs1500 price point, net of a potential subsidy of ~Rs2200 per handset, according to media reports and industry sources. However, we expect this to be a temporary arrangement for two years or so by when sub Rs2000 4G smartphones would be available.
