Reliance Industries Limited may formally announce separate results for its telecom venture Reliance Jio Infocomm from the July-September quarter, according to a report in the Economic Times.
A company source told the publication that the RIL board would take the final call on this. "The company wants the business to settle down and then report numbers separately. There is no statutory requirement for RIL," he further said.
Reliance Jio, which commercially started operation in September 2016, posted a net loss for the six months ended March at Rs 22.50 crore, up from Rs 7.46 crore a year earlier.
Reliance Jio had been offering free voice and data services under a trial run till March 2017, which helped it garner over 100 million users within 170 days. The telco had made its services chargeable from April 1, 2017, which has slowed down its rate of user addition.
Reliance Jio added 3.9 million new subscribers in the month of April, taking its overall base to 112.6 million. The telco pipped incumbent telcos Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular in terms of user additions in the month, according to latest data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). A report from Goldman Sachs said that Jio added 0.4 million active (VLR) subscribers in April, its fourth straight month of deceleration and with Jio starting to charge from April, the slowdown in subscriber additions is likely to continue in coming months as well.
After becoming a paid service, the subscriber addition of Jio slowed down and it’s continuing with every passing month. And the month of April is no different as well. The net additions of Jio were 3.9 million, while active subs stand at 0.4 million.
The ET report said that the 4G entrant is again in the customer acquisition mode, from conversion to paid service.
The person blamed the slowdown due to the limited availability of 4G handsets. "But Jio is still getting a majority share of the incremental 4G smartphone shipments," the person was quoted as saying.
Jio, however, is planning a 4G VoLTE feature phone handset, which will target new users in rural parts of the country. Analysts say that the move will help the company quickly expand its user base in India.
