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Reliance Jio 4G gaining share from ALL operators

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The industry revenue figures for the Jun-17 quarter recently released show headline improvement in market share for incumbents – but that is not representative of customer wallet as Jio has not reported revenues.

While on a Gross Revenue basis, 35-45% of Jio’s market share gains has come from top-3, the improving traffic mix for Jio means ~60% of market share gains on AGR level are from top 3. We believe Airtel has lost at least 80-200 bp market share since Jio’s launch, while Vodafone+Idea have lost 160-240 bp.

Jio is yet to report revenues from the telecom business, and we believe the TRAI reporting primarily captures only the interconnect payments and

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Reliance Jio 4G LTE / Small Cell Deployment indicate Mobile Data Pricing at 50% Discount to Airtel

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Jio 4G LTE Small Cell DeploymentDue to increased demand in urban areas, a majority of the data rollout is happening through Small Cells. Compared to BTS, small cells costs 30% less to Huawei; however, small cells are selling at the same price vs BTS of nearly INR 1.0-1.2mn, including ancillary cost, due to higher demand. Small cells provide one-third of coverage compared to BTS but due to lower space requirements, they suit the urban network rollout.

Reliance Jio’s network investment and spectrum holdings provide it significantly higher capacity than existing operators, thereby allowing Jio to reduce data rates/MB to less than 50% of the current market pricing led by Airtel. The company’s investments are long term in nature, and not much in the way for short-term

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Reliance Jio Phased Launch in Next 3 to 6 Months

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Reliance Jio Launch IndiaReliance Jio Infocomm wishes to integrate 800Mhz Spectrum from Reliance Communications before launching commercial services in a phased manner spanning over the next 3 to 9 months. The next 2 months will see upscaled trials (beyond employees), to test scalability and coverage. Their biggest advantage is the pan-India 800 Mhz spectrum for LTE, while none of the incumbents are launching LTE on sub-Ghz spectrum.

Reliance Jio is unlikely to use the 2G/3G network of even roaming partners like RCOM/BSNL, their network coverage needs to be near-perfect

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How Akash Ambani is Positioning Jio Mobile Data LTE Offering for 1 Bn Consumers?

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Akash Ambani's Jio Mobile Data StrategyReliance Jio Infocomm launch still looks to be a few months away. This has been the ongoing dilemma for the past few years now, and the uncertainty is not helping anyone. Management attributed this to a combination of some more testing to be fully-ready for all data applications, being able to integrate 800MHz, etc.

What is Akash Ambani’s Mobile Broadband Strategy for 1 Billion Consumer Market ?
Jio is basing its approach on poor data speeds and low internet penetration in India, and expectation of high growth over the next 10 years in data traffic, especially video

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Why LTE – Voice Fallback Crucial for Reliance Jio ?

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Few countries offer both TD and FDD simultaneously – US and Sweden are the two markets. LTE ecosystem is well developed across multiple bands ranging from 800/900/1800/1900/2100/2500/2600MHz. In fact, 2300MHz doesn’t appear to be a very popular band amongst the sample set of 18 countries.

LTE was launched on an average seven years after 3G launch and when data contribution to revenue averaged ~27%. Assuming Reliance Jio’s launch by end of CY15, the data contribution in India would be ~20%. While it may seem slightly early, we believe the key is the development of the right

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Reliance Jio Delivered Unmatched LTE Backed Wi-Fi Experience at IPL Mumbai

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Reliance Jio 4G Speeds UnbeatableReliance Jio Infocomm launched Jio Chat App (messaging /file sharing, audio & video calling app) last month and has already crossed 500,000 downloads. During IPL matches in Mumbai, the company offered free Wi-Fi facility backed by 4G LTE network for over 30,000 spectators at the Wankhede Stadium.

A reader of our Blog has sent in this review along with a screenshot of the Speedtest Result using OOKLA App he performed at the Wankhede Stadium using Reliance Jio Mobile Broadband. The results were quite impressive, clocking speeds of 51Mbps download and 36Mbps upload. It took just half a minute to download a 60 MB video, which typically takes ~4 minutes on

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Reliance Jio Lights Up 60,000+ Towers, Testing Small Cell Networks

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Reliance JIo Employyes Network TestWe got some updates on Reliance Jio Infocomm’s network from some of the Service Providers(SP) who are currently serving the upcoming telco. Of the ~65,000 sites of RJio that are currently installed, it appears 28,000-30,000 are RJio’s own towers (mix of poles and full ground based towers). If true, this is a much larger share of own towers in RJio’s network than what we had earlier anticipated.

Further, one of the SPs we spoke to that has a contract from Reliance Jio in few of the circles indicated that many of these sites are up and running (i.e. company is spending on fuel/power on a daily basis) as network testing is aggressively being carried out. The SP is gearing up for the launch of commercial voice+data services (23000MHz + 1800MHz) by Reliance Jio in a handful of cities in June / July.

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Reliance Jio 4G LTE Mega Nation Wide Launch Delayed

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Reliance Jio 4G LTE LaunchBased on our Industry & Insider channel checks, we find Reliance Jio Infocomm well placed to meet the rollout obligations by Aug-2015 i.e. they will likely have a soft launch with adequate towers. We believe that the actual launch will be around Dec-15 coinciding with founder Dhirubhai Ambani’s birth anniversary (vs. market expectation of May-15) as the company may take some time to have a good quality network to be operational.

In our independent assesment some of the reasons for the delay in launch vs. our expectations are 1) Time taken to rollout fiber as approvals for right of way (RoW) take time; 2) Rolling out a good quality 2300MHz & 1800Mhz 4G network with offloading via WiFi and Small-cells is taking more time and 3) Jio may look for a good quality voice solution on 4G network like Vo-LTE with the latest acquistion of 800Mhz spectrum rather than a fallback on traditional 2G or 3G network.

If the company is going for

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Will Reliance Jio 4G Launch Dent 3G Subscriber Additions ?

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Reliance Jio 4G to Impact 3G in India3G adoption in India has been much slower than initially expected. We think dismal 3G penetration was due to a combination of reasons – (a) 3G speed not really being perceptibly better than 2G due to operators’ reluctance to invest in the network and smaller spectrum holdings/size, (b) unavailability of affordable devices (which was the case at the time of launch, but not anymore though), (c) lack of subscriber data usage behavior. However, 3G adoption has picked up over the last few quarters as 3G handsets are much more affordable and the handset replacement cycle has shortened, while a larger proportion of subscribers are willing to use data services.

2G & 3G Shift to 4G Mobile Data ?
It is conceivable that a generation of data-hungry subscribers in India may leapfrog from 2G to 4G bypassing 3G (or at best remaining using 3G for

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Reliance Jio Infocomm Launch – What will be Similar to 2003 and Different in 2014 ?

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Reliance Jio Infocomm LogoReliance Jio Infocomm launch is expected to be a game changer in the Indian Telecom Industry. We believe Reliance Jio will help increase the affordability of data services, by reducing tariff / equipment costs, and evolve consumer usage patterns, by introducing several unique and new services.

We’d like to compare the similarities and differences between Reliance Infocomm’s [Now RCom] 2003 launch [Launched on 28-12-2002, but took off in mid 2003] and the current one [Reliance Jio]. The key similarities, in our view, are the aggressive offerings with newer technologies, which would likely lead to an expansion in the market. The key differences, in our view, will be the relatively late entry this time, which would lead the company to follow an aggressive subscriber poaching strategy, and R-Jio’s inclination to use / share

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