Jio ‘eliminated’ 22 million subscribers in Q2 2019 because of IUC ṭarriff implantation

Reliance Industries Limited announced its earnings figures and results for Q3 2019 and made some announcements about Reliance Jio’s performance as well. As per the released numbers, Reliance Jio is now the biggest telecom operator in the country, in terms of both subscriber base and revenue market share. Replacing Vodafone-Idea from the top spot, Jio has announced that its total user base now stands at 370 million. In Q3 2019, Jio added 14.8 million users during 3QFY20, however, Jio says ‘elimination’ of 22 million subscribers also happened during this quarter.

Reliance Jio elaborated on the statement saying that these are users with heavy voice usage that aren’t on Jio’s network anymore. To recall, Reliance Jio commenced levying Interconnect Usage Charge a while ago and its users who place calls on another network now need to pay 6 paise per minute. Jio’s outgoing traffic in overall offnet traffic also reduced to 48 percent by the end of the quarter, within 2 months of IUC implementation. Since other telcos still don’t levy IUC charges from their customers, Jio’s decision to do so was expected to result in loss of subscribers. However, it remains to be seen whether the decision will impact the telcos’ subscriber base in the long run. 

In addition to the aforementioned announcements, Jio revealed that data consumption per user per month on its network averages 11.1 GB, while average voice consumption is 760 minutes. Jio posted a 62.5 percent YoY increase in net profit for the last quarter ending on December 31, 2019, which amounts to a net profit of Rs 1,350 crore. The company also confirmed the rumours that its JioFiber customers who were a part of the initial tests are being moved to paid plans

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