It may be the newest kid on the cellular block, but Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio is already breaking all sorts of records. How we wish they were data speed records, but we digress.
Within three months of its much-anticipated launch, Reliance Jio has already crossed the 50 million subscriber mark. Sources within Jio have confirmed that the 4G VoLTE-based cellular operator has signed up as much as 1,000 customers per minute or 6 lakh subscribers per day since its commercial launch on 5th September this year.
Reliance Jio is one of the fastest growing mobile operators in the world
Earlier in October, after completing one month of commercial service, Reliance Jio had announced that it had signed up 1.6 crore subscribers within just one month, making it the fastest ramp-up by any mobile network operator anywhere in the world.
Reliance Jio beats Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular
Compared to Reliance Jio Infocomm, telco stalwarts like Airtel took 12 years while Vodafone and Idea took 13 years, each, to acquire 5 crore subscribers, respectively.
If we restrict our comparison to just 4G subscribers base, Reliance Jio's customers base is five times that of Airtel (around 1 crore subscribers) and 17 times of Idea Cellular (30 lakh subscribers), respectively, according to latest numbers from COAI.
But in absolute terms, Reliance Jio still has a long way to go. Reliance Jio¡¯s overall user base is ?just one fifth of that of Bharti Airtel, which had 26.267 crore mobile subscribers in October.
Jio¡¯s number, while impressive in a short span of time, is still significantly lower in comparison to Vodafone had 20.19 crore million subscribers and Idea Cellular 18.025 crore users. RReliance Jio is also alleging established cellular providers from blocking or dragging their feet on customers' MNP requests.
One of the reasons why Reliance Jio¡¯s attracting customers at an unprecedented rate is because it¡¯s offering users data services free till December 31, 2016, if they buy Jio connection by December 03, 2016.
Download / Upload speeds like these seem to be a thing of the past on Reliance Jio, which is a worrying trend
However, the glitter seems to be coming off the initial enthusiasm surrounding Reliance Jio, as more customers are getting online and network congestion leading to erratic download and upload speeds. Hopefully, Reliance Jio will scale up its infrastructure to address these congestion and bandwidth issues.