Reliance to invest Rs 600 bn in Jio this year, may borrow Rs 1 trn more

Subscriber additions, while suppressing incumbent telecom operators, will continue to remain top priority, say analysts

Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) is likely to invest another Rs 600 billion this year in its telecom business Reliance Jio Infocomm with an emphasis on faster rollout of broadband services and wireless expansion, Livemint reported, quoting anonymous company sources.

The sources have also been quoted as saying that Reliance Jio might borrow up to Rs 1 trillion in addition to the above-mentioned investment. Jio and RIL spokespersons did not comment on queries about the investment.

“Management made it very clear that their focus in the near term is to retain and grow their subscriber base and they would respond to market pricing. Essentially the implication was that incumbents would need to raise tariffs, but this would effectively lead to loss of market share for incumbents as JIO would offer the best 'value' to subscribers and hence continue to see large subscriber additions,” noted JP Morgan in their recent report on RIL.

The report further stated that JIO is expected to launch its broadband business with a pricing strategy similar to that of its telecom arm, given its focus is on creating a new market.

While JIO’s average revenue per user (ARPU) fell to Rs 137 from Rs 154 in the last quarter of 2017-18, it still remains better than that of Airtel and Idea cellular. JIO also managed to add almost 9 million subscribers during the quarter.

“Jio is expected to remain aggressive to gain market share, which could keep industry revenue under pressure and return ratios of incumbents suppressed,” noted an India Equity Research in a report on Monday.

JioFiber, the wired broadband arm, has started offering what they claim to be 'ultra-high-speed' fibre to home (FTTH) broadband connections with 1.1 terabytes (TB) of free data at speeds of 100 megabits per second (mbps) in select markets in the country already. However, commercial services are likely to be rolled out in the second-half of the year.

The company currently claims more than 300,000 km of optical fibre network in the country and the company is expected to target over 100 million households across the country with the service.

Reliance Jio Prime membership subscription to end on March 31: What next?

Jio Prime subscriptions, started April 1 last year, expire on 31 March. Now, with the expiry approaching, it is expected that Jio would make a new announcement sometime soon

Reliance Jio shook the Indian telecommunication space with the launch of its affordable, data-centric network. After doling out freebies for more than the first six months since the launch, the Mukesh Ambani-owned telecom major introduced Prime membership at Rs 99 with the promise of offering subsidised recharge options and additional benefits for a period of one year.

The Jio Prime memberships, which came into effect on April 1 last year, are valid until 31 March. Now, with the subscription expiry approaching, it is expected that Jio would make an announcement sometime soon.

While there is nothing official yet, it is expected that the company might completely do away with the Prime subscription or offer it as a free service.

Here is what the company offered in the first iteration of the Prime membership:

• Free unlimited data and voice services for one year at an effective price of Rs 10 per day
• Special recharge plans with additional data and validity
• Free VoLTE-based voice calls to any network, even on roaming with no black out days either.
• Free access to Jio app suite

The Prime membership was initially rolled out as a loyalty programme to retain subscribers as the company moved from free to paid services.In the first leg, the Prime membership was advertised as a limited period offer. However, as time moved, the company continued offering the membership to get more subscribers. Now, according to Jio’s official portal, there is no mention of services that the company offers to non-prime subscribers. Therefore, it is safe to assume that the subscription based membership program may eventually fade out.

Your smart watch may help catch disease early: study

Your smart watch may not only measure your steps and physiological parameters, but also help detect your risk for diseases such as cold and diabetes early, a new Stanford study has found.

By following 60 people through their everyday lives, researchers at Stanford University in the US found that smart watches and other personal biosensor devices can help flag when people have colds and even signal the onset of complex conditions like Lyme disease and diabetes.


"We want to tell when people are healthy and also catch illnesses at their earliest stages," said Michael Snyder, Professor at Stanford and senior author of the study.

Smart watches and similar portable devices are commonly used for measuring steps and physiological parameters, but have not generally been used to detect illness.

Snyder's team took advantage of the portability and ease of using wearable devices to collect a myriad of measurements from participants for up to two years to detect deviations from their normal baseline for measurements such as heart rate and skin temperature.

Because the devices continuously follow these measures, they potentially provide rapid means to detect the onset of diseases that change your physiology.

Many of these deviations coincided with times when people became ill. Heart rate and skin temperature tends to rise when people become ill, said Snyder.

His team developed a software programme for data from a smart watch called 'Change of Heart' to detect these deviations and sense when people are becoming sick.

The devices were able to detect common colds and in one case helped detect Lyme disease - in Snyder, who participated in the study. (more)

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Satisfaction of 4G users high, Jio to trigger more tariff cuts: Survey

Some 67% said they will use Jio as secondary SIM/dongle and 18% will use as primary one

Breaking News : Even as satisfaction levels of the subscribers of 4G services in India have risen to 97 per cent in three months, more tariff cuts are on the anvil with retention level for Jio seen at a high 65 percent when its free offer draws to a close, says a survey.

Conducted by Bank of America Merrill Lynch on September 2016 and again three months later, the survey finds 96 per cent of the customers satisfied on voice quality and 66 percent on data speeds. But high cost and slow speeds remain the biggest issues for incumbents.

"Our survey indicates that Jio's free service is gaining reasonable traction with 26 per cent using Jio as primary SIM and 21 per cent as secondary SIM. Some 55 per cent of the surveyed users find Jio speed higher than that of other telcos," it says.

"Some 67 per cent said they will use Jio as secondary SIM/dongle and 18 per cent will use as primary one when Jio's free offer ends. Amongst these, 57 per cent said that they will go for Jio's Rs 400-500 package, rather than the cheapest one."

On the flip side, it says: "Voice calling is still an issue with only 22 per cent having no problems at all. Some 32 per cent users indicated that they use Jio as it is faster and 28 per cent as it is cheap."(more)

Reliance Jio call drops due to its under-preparedness: Airtel

Reliance Jio call drops due to its under-preparedness: Airtel

Airtel on Tuesday blamed Reliance Jio itself for network connectivity issues and call failures, saying they are due to Jio's own "under-preparedness", insufficient testing efforts and acquiring a large number of customers at the pre-launch stage itself.

In a letter to Reliance Jio, Airtel said: "While RJIO has continued to allege huge call failure on account of insufficient number of PoIs (points of interconnect), however, we believe that the prime reason for such callfailures was on account of acquisition of a large number of subscribers by RJIO even before the declaration of the commercial launch."

The letter, sent on Monday, goes on to say that augmentation of POIs based on actual traffic, necessitates a reciprocal action from the other party also.

"It is important to note, that despite our best efforts, the POIs are still in the process of augmentation due to issues at your end," Airtel said.

Airtel said that despite the prompt and colossal effort on its part, as on date, only 2,484 E1s (interconnect ports) are live out of a total capacity of 3,048 provided, primarily due to various reasons for delay "attributable solely to RJIO's under-preparedness and insufficient testing teams and efforts".

It added: "Even these capacities could be augmented with great persuasion by Airtel teams. During the augmentation exercise, your circles had cited issues with regard to Acceptance Testing, transmission media related concerns and hence the augmentation process took much longer and even till date the complete POI's have not been augmented due to unpreparedness of your teams." Read more

Ways to use 4G data while paying 3G rates

Ways to use 4G data while paying 3G rates

With mobile companies offering faster 4G data service at 3G rates, many customers are shifting to the newer technology. After all, who does not want more speed at the same price? But here’s a catch — faster speed means quicker usage of data packs.

However, just because 4G consumes more data, one does not have to stick with 3G to save on data consumption. Checking emails, sending and receiving messages over WhatsApp, checking Facebook and Twitter doesn’t eat much of your data. Usually, streaming media services like videos and games dries up a large chunk of data.

If you can change settings of your apps and proactively manage their data consumption, you can reduce your 4G bill. For example, if you go to YouTube app’s settings, you can choose to stream HD videos only when the phone is connected to Wi-Fi. Similarly, in video conference apps such as Skype, you can opt for lower quality video.Read more.

Airtel ranks 1st spot on data usage, Reliance jio 6th

Airtel ranks 1st spot on data usage, Reliance jio 6th

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's telecom arm Reliance Jio even before its commercial launch has climbed up to sixth position on data usage as its pilot launch saw users downloading more as against some industry players.

While Airtel continues to lead with 45 million gigabyte (GB) of data usage per month in the March quarter, Jio is ranked sixth with 13 million GB, according to latest data available with the company.

For the quarter in question, Airtel had about 55 million users with a monthly usage of 45 million GB. Vodafone's 47 million users downloaded 28 million GB of data at an average 0.6 GB per user.

Jio, which has done a pilot launch for its employees and their relatives and friends, saw its 70 lakh users download 13 million GB of data at an average of 19.2 GB per user.

The company is offering the service free to its employees and at a nominal cost to their relatives. The speed of 4G is also said to be behind the high data usage.

Taken together, India had 278 million data users in the said quarter downloading 202 million GB at an average of 0.7 GB per user. (more)

Airtel strikes gold with 4G girl Sasha Chetri

Sasha Chettri, Airtel’s 4G girl, is the ad world’s newest poster girl. Chettri has gone viral on social media, ever since Airtel kicked off its 4G campaign last July, and, in the process, has delivered for brand Airtel what no other campaign has - high recall value. With her unconventional and provocative approach, 21-year-old Chettri has firmly put brand Airtel on the country’s 4G landscape.

Today, 4G in India means Airtel just the way years ago Coca-Cola staked claim on the entire soft drinks category through its Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola campaign with Aamir Khan.

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Given that the next generation of mobile broadband, or 4G, is about speed, the television commercial showing two girls racing their phones on a terrace in Lucknow was an unusual way to break the clutter on television. Given that other telcos have not come up with such high-decibel campaigns, Chettri has become a shorthand for 4G as a category.

In advertising parlance, the success of a campaign is measured through top-of-the-mind awareness and Chettri has helped Airtel increase this score by 13 per cent compared to other campaigns such as Har Ek Friend Zaroori Hota Hai.

It isn't just the brand recall value that has shot up, Airtel's revenue market-share touched a six-year high of 31.4 per cent in December 2015. In the five key data markets - Mumbai, Delhi, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala - Airtel increased its marketshare by 140 basis points in the nine months ending December 2015. According to CLSA, Airtel is upping the ante on data offerings. On the ground, Bharti Airtel has stepped up its 4G data offering through a slew of industry firsts on product as well as distribution. The company has deployed long-term evolution, or LTE, using carrier aggregation in Kerala, enabling speeds of up to 135mbps on its 4G network.

The campaign has many firsts to its credit. For starters, Airtel went with an unknown face to launch a big shift in broadband technology and secondly, it showed the gumption to use a young woman for this.

Explains Chettri, “In India, women are still used to endorsing soaps and shampoos but not technology as stereotypes still exist.” Agnello Dias, chairman and co-founder of Taproot, the agency behind the campaign, says: “Sasha is right and she is both loved and trolled at the same time for breaking stereotypes, but there is little doubt that the campaign has embedded Airtel's ownership of 4G in the public consciousness. While the campaign has resonated strongly right through several SECs, it has allowed the brand to own 4G like no one else.”Read More.

4G phones to drive smart devices market in India: Samsung

Mobile handset maker Samsung India said on Tuesday that 4G phones will drive the smartphone market in the country on the back of increasing data speed.

Samsung, one of the largest smartphone makers in the country, also claimed 60% share in total shipments of 4G phones in the country last year.

"With data speed, evolution of network happening, the adoption of smartphones will accelerate and 4G will be one of the key factors," Samsung India General Manager (Mobile Business) Vishal Kaul, said.

Vodafone launches 4G in Mumbai on 1,800 Mhz

Vodafone, country's second largest telecom operator, launched its fourth generation broadband services in Mumbai. The service was unveiled by chief minister Devendra Phadnavis, a Vodafone customer himself. The company launches its services months after Bharti Airtellaunched its 4G services across 300 towns in India.

At the launch, Chief Minister Phadnavis said mobile was a key aspect of its JAM trinity (Jandhan, Aadhaar, Mobile) which was transforming governance. He said that he would have liked if Vodafone had launched 4G in Mumbai first as it was the commercial capital of the country.

The 4G era: Will it change the game for media firms?

The data party just began. Earlier this month, Vodafone launched its 4Gservice in Kerala. This Sunday, Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Industries launched Lyf, its 4G-enabled phone, and its Jio 4G services - only for employees currently. A full commercial launch is due in end March or early April 2016. Just before Jio, came Idea. Airtel and Aircel have already launched their 4G services.

4G, or LTE as it is called globally, compresses huge amounts of data making it easier to transport it over the airwaves. This means “better speeds and, therefore, more video consumption. And anything that pushes up video consumption is good for us,” says Sudhanshu Vats, group CEO, Viacom18 Media.

That is an understatement. 4G, say analysts, is the single biggest game changer in the Rs 100,000-crore market for media and entertainment in India. Largely because it could trigger massive consumption of mobile video, expanding the market for everything - from films and music to newspapers and TV shows. And because it brings the big boys, the telecom and broadband network operators, back into the media game.