Three years back, Reliance Jio entered the telecom sector with the lowest tariffs, and with its entry, a price battle that kicked out among all the other telecom operators. Currently, only two telecom operators are still Reliance Jio: Bharti Airtel and Vodafone-India. Other operators have either shut down or have been forced to merge with their competitors. for instance, Vodafone and Idea Cellular had to merge to continue to exist in the market against Reliance Jio.
As per the user base data of this year’s Q2, Reliance Jio has surpassed Vodafone-Idea to become the country’s largest operator in terms of subscribers in the country. Both the telecom operators recently released its individual on second-quarter figures. According to the data released by Vodafone Idea, its subscribers have declined in the second quarter to 320 million, whereas, Reliance Jio has shown 331.3 million growth in its subscribers by the end of Q2 2019. The most recent TRAI statistics ending May have revealed that in terms of mobile phone subscribers, Jio has become the country’s second-largest operator with 322.9 million subscribers. With this, it has left Bharti Airtel behind as the telecom operator had 320.3 million subscribers in the first-quarter report. According to data released by TRAI, Reliance Jio market share increased to 27.8 percent, whereas Vodafone Idea market share was 33.4%. On the other hand, Bharti Airtel Ltd. market shares went down to 27.6%.
Vodafone-Idea revealed in its earnings report that its user base declined as compared to previous quarter “due to customer churn following the introduction of ‘service validity vouchers’ in the prior quarters.” The telecom operator further said that “high ARPU (average revenue per user) subscriber base remained broadly stable,” and added that it had taken “certain market initiatives to offer a better value proposition to low ARPU customers and to reduce low-end churn.”
In order to perk up its Average revenue per user (ARPU), Vodafone-Idea recently launched superior data plans for its subscribers at Rs 229 and Rs 255. The Rs 229 plan offers unlimited local and STD calling bundled with 2GB data per day. On the other hand, the Rs 255 plan offers unlimited local and STD calling coupled with 2.5GB data per day. These two plans are aimed at making heavy data users upgrade from Rs. 169 and Rs 199 plans. On the other hand, Reliance Jio’s ARPU was Rs. 122, down from Rs. 126.2 in the previous quarter.
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