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Jio’s 4G Subscriber Addition Done – Incumbents Fight Back

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Reliance Jio’s net active customer addition slowed down further in April to 0.4m compared to 4.1m in March. This number has been slowing every month since December (13.7m net adds) and indicates to us that majority of customers with 4G devices who wanted to try Jio services are already using Jio and incrementally the customer additions will depend on increase in VOLTE device penetration.

While Jio started charging in April, it had not deactivated the non-paying customers in April and thus some of its subscribers are likely to have

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Reliance Jio Lyf Mobiles Unable to Shake the Market

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Jio LyfReliance Jio Infocomm is yet to commercially launch service after 6 years of acquiring 2300Mhz spectrum in June 2010. As the company is now looking to integrate Reliance Communications’ 850Mhz spectrum as a part of its network offering, we expect commercial launch to take approximately 6 more months.

In the interim, JIO has launched a wide range of LTE devices under its LYF brand name starting at a price band of INR3,999-5,499 for LYF Flame. In the mid-range RJIO has Wind phones which is in price band of

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Reliance Jio Launch Delayed / MisQuoted ?

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Reliance Jio LaunchMedia articles have stated that Jio launch is once again being delayed with expected timeline for launch now being 2H16 (versus our initial expectation of April-June timeframe), a recent company insider has mentioned that Jio launch is not being postponed and that there was a misquote. While we believe that few months of delay would not materially derail Jio’s proposition to consumers we think that the network is ready and working fine.

Our checks indicate that Jio network quality is fine with the company being able to offer consistent 10-15 Mbps speeds except for Rural Areas and Outskirts of Cities. We think that the company would have a circle-by-circle launch rather

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Reliance Jio LYF SmartPhones Adds Life to 4G-LTE ecosystem

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Reliance Jio LYFReliance Jio has launched its LYF branded handsets through the Reliance Digital stores. We visited some of these stores to experience the phones and came back impressed. Key takeaways,

LYF handsets compare well with competition: and offer more quality features at lower prices. 4 models launched priced at ~Rs 6,500 (LYF Flame), ~Rs 15,000 (LYF Water 1/ Water 2) and ~Rs 24,000 (LYF Earth 1). We expect the models to be successful given high-end competitive features at lower price points. All four models offer : (1) seamless voice to video call switch facility, (2) multi-party video calling, (3) Wi-Fi calling support with uniform dialer.

Corning’s Gorilla glass provides good

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Reliance Jio – Looking Beyond Network

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Jio-Lyf-MobilesOver the last 18 months Reliance Jio’s has been on infrastructure, technology, and rollout milestones, amongst others. With the soft launch for employees having started, we look beyond the basic infrastructure and into product strategies.

RJio’s 4G network ourselves, is on par with incumbents in the urban areas, but is lacking in rural areas (maybe have roaming arrangements). Importantly, VoLTE works seamlessly in interconnecting with regular mobile/fixedline networks. The speeds are quite impressive, but remember it is also an empty network! Reliance Infocomm was reaching to masses however this time the strategy is exactly the opposite – Reach High End Customers with Unmatched Mobile Broadband Offering.

The biggest difference in RJio’s business model

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How will the 4G LTE Handset ecosystem evolve in India?

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4G LTE handset Ecosystem IndiaIndian Telecom Operators are unlikely to give handset subsidies given the predominant pre-paid market and past bitter experience of CDMA players. Incumbents instead are likely to encourage faster 4G handset adoption through bundling (offer some discount on data tariffs at the time of handset purchase). For example, Airtel is currently offering customers who upgrade their handsets to 4G double data for some time plus some other offers.

Like any other new entrant, Reliance Jio – a Greenfield 4G player – will be more aggressive in building the handset ecosystem without which any meaningful increase in its network capacity utilization will not be possible. As part of this –

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Reliance Jio Mobile Handset / Wireless Distributor Business

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Reliance Jio HandsetsReliance Jio Infocomm has 1,071 centres across the country with 35 in Mumbai alone. They will sell handsets as well as wireless services. The distribution network for handset and services are separate. Wireless services are 4x of Reliance centres, i.e. ~4,000 distributors whereas handsets are 40% of Reliance centres with 400 distributors.

Jio management aims to Create a healthy handset ecosystem at an attractive price. Currently, RJIO has four series of handsets: Water, Earth, Lyf and Flame; each of them has four

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Reliance Jio Launch – Device Strategy Unveiled

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Reliance Jio Mobile HandsetsReliance Jio Infocomm is expected to launch with three types of device offerings – 1) Dual SIM smartphones; 2) MiFi device; and 3) Vo-LTE smartphones. Amongst these, a dual SIM smartphone could be the most attractive to a consumer (in the early stages of launch) as they could continue to use their existing telecom providers’ SIM to make voice calls and use Jio’s SIM for access to high-speed data offerings.

RJio’s MiFi devices can be more popular among the niche high usage consumers (particularly youth) and expect it to compete head-on with dongle offerings from companies like RCOM, Tata and MTS. The uptake of Vo-LTE smartphone (which allow Vo-LTE calls) would be contingent on the quality of calls the new network is able to deliver. RJio suggest VoLTE trials have been

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Reliance Jio LYF SmartPhones Ready to Hit Market

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RJio LYF MobilesGreenfield 4G LTE Telecom Operator Reliance Jio Infocomm has been aggressively negotiating deals to create an affordable 4G LTE SmartPhone eco-system. As a 4G only operator Jio is pushing the improvement of 4G smartphone in India. Apart India’s 2 biggest handset companies (by market share) Samsung and Micromax, Jio is also working closely with almost all handset companies to not only have their own branded phones but also ensure other companies come up with their own smartphones.

The company is looking for 4G phones to be priced between Rs 5,000-25,000. Jio would need a 5 band phone which works on 900, 2100 bands along with 800,

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Reliance Jio Enters Beta Testing – Jio Money Launched

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Jio-MoneyReliance Jio Infocomm mentioned that network rollout has been substantially completed across India. It has employed a large number of testers across the country. The beta program is to be ramped up in the next few weeks. Jio will be a pure 4G-LTE player with day-1 capacity to support 200mn subscribers; 85% coverage likely vs mandatory 80%.

Jio has demonstrated pan-India Lawful Intercept and Monitoring (LIM) facilities for LTE data and voice video & messaging, plus ILD services, to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). It has completed the acceptance testing of its network in all circles with

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