Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio's subscriber base has touched 160 million in 15 months of after the 4G entrant launched services in the telecom market with aggressive voice and data offerings. The new milestone was made public by Mukesh Ambani's son Akash Ambani during an interaction with Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan at the RIL40 event held in Mumbai recently.
India's mobile subscriber base stands at over 1.1 billion, second after China. Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, and Idea Cellular are the top three operators in India.
Bharti Airtel had 285 million mobile subscribers in October, while Vodafone had 208 million subscribers, followed by Idea Cellular (191 million), and Reliance Jio (145.9 million).
Reliance Jio, which launched services officially in September 2016, disrupted the Indian telecom market with a six-month promotional offer of free voice and data that helped it garner 100 million users in a quick time. To be precise, Reliance Jio touched the 100 million subscriber base in just 172 days after opening the services to the public. Jio's free offers triggered a price war in the market, resulting in losses for top telcos like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular and RCom.
Jio is now preparing to disrupt the country's fixed-line broadband space and is planning to launch of its high-speed fiber to the home (FTTH) broadband service early next year. It is currently working aggressively to expand its optic fiber network in the country to target 50 million households in the first phase of roll out.
The telecom operator's ultimate plan is to target 100 million households across these cities with its FTTH service, which it will bundle with IPTV service, called Reliance Jio DTH.
The Mukesh Ambani-led telecom operator, which is currently running beta trials for its FTTH service in around ten cities, including Mumbai, Delhi and some cities in Gujarat, is planning to launch the commercial services in more than 30 cities early next year. The telecom operator will also bundle its IPTV service with the fixed broadband service.
2018 would be the year Jio will be aiming to become the leading operator in all the three formats- mobile broadband, fixed line broadband, and DTH.
