Reliance Jio May Raise Data Price in 2018: OpenSignal Report

Reliance Jio May Raise Data Price in 2018: OpenSignal Report

 

Jio may end this traffic war with incumbent operator in 2018, raise data price next year, according to a report of OpenSignal. Jio could take this step after a year of discounted 4G data that have seen the lowest-ever traffic in the country. While this help India go to the top of data consumption chart, it meant an intense war to retain consumers in the telecom industry. There is an indication of price hike seen in Diwali where Jio raised its popular prepaid and postpaid plans. The Jio prime subscription will end this year can be come with another renewed plan in April 2018.

The London-based firm that specializes in crowdsourced wireless coverage mapping all over the world said that Jio’s market entry kicked off an intense price war in the telecom scene in India, resulting in offering of cheaper LTE services from all operators, driving more consumers to 4G than ever before.

“The trend will continue next year. Whether Jio remains the huge dominant driver in 4G growth remains to be seen. After a year of free and steeply discounted data pricing, Jio may make 2018 the year it raises prices. That could level the playing field for India’s Operators,” said Andrea Toth from OpenSignal.

“Jio’s widespread 4G access, along with its at-first free and later heavily discounted data and voice plans, quickly won the hearts – and wallets – of more than 100 million mobile users across the country,” Toth added.

India has 40% of mobile data subscriber which is expected to double to 80% by 2011, according to Crisil’s Prediction.

“LTE service have taken the leading role in the unprecedented increase of data user in the past year, in large part thanks to Jio,” the report said.

According to a report of TRAI, during the quarter June 2017, total data usage stood at over 4.2 million terabytes, out of which 4G data according for 3.9 million TBs.

“LTE availability in India remarkable. The user were able to connect to an LTE signal over 84 percent of the time – a rise of over 10% point from a year earlier. This places India ahead of more established countries in the 4G landscape such as Sweden, Taiwan, Switzerland or the UK,” Toth noted.

Barely six months in the market Jio secured its lead “with user able to access its LTE signals 91.6 percent of time,” according to an earlier OpenSignal national report published in April this year where no other mobile operator managed to score higher than 60% in these tests.

“Six month later, we saw significant improvements in availability across all major operator but those improvements weren’t enough to close the gap with Jio, which was able to provide an LTE signal at a jaw-dropping 95.5% of the time in the same test period,” Toth informed.

With operators rolling out low-cost data plans to grow their consumer bases, and manufactures start launching low-cost 4G smartphones enabling a greater slice of the population to get connected, OpenSignal expects 4G availability to maintain its rising trajectory across the country.

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Technology 19.