Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Stephen Rose
CEO Render Networks

Reliance Jio continues its aggressive subscriber addition even after the introduction of IUC Top-Up vouchers. Back in October this year, Reliance Jio came out with IUC vouchers and also started charging six paise per minute from the users for off-net voice calls. According to the latest Telecom Subscription Data released by Trai, Reliance Jio added a whopping 9.1 million new customers in October 2019, which was followed by other operators- BSNL, Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel. Yes, Vodafone Idea has managed to grab nearly two lakh new users during the same month, something which we haven’t seen for a long time now. BSNL, on the flip side, continues to add new subscribers on a small note and the state-run operator now has 9.92% market share. Overall, BSNL and MTNL now have a combined market share of 10.20%. The overall telecom subscriber base reaches 1204.85 million at the end of October.

Interconnect Usage Charges Didn’t Hurt Reliance Jio in October
When Reliance Jio started charging for off-net voice calls, everyone expected the telco would start losing subscribers and will no longer add new users. However, the Trai data shows otherwise. Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio added 9.1 million subscribers in October, followed by BSNL which added 2.8 lakh new customers. Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel managed to add 1.9 lakh and 81,974 new subscribers during the same month.
The major setback for Reliance Jio is other telcos offering unlimited voice calls without any FUP limit. Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel removed the FUP limit on off-net voice calls, but Reliance Jio did not remove it. It will be interesting to see when the November 2019 subscription data comes out.