Mumbai: India’s largest telecom operator Reliance Jio is completing six years of its launch and in these 6 years, the telecom industry has registered an increase of more than 100 times in average per capita data consumption per month.

According to TRAI, before the launch of Jio, every Indian customer used to use only 154 MB of data in a month. Now the data consumption figure has increased by 100 times to an astonishing level of 15.8 GB per month per subscriber. On the other hand, Jio users use about 20 GB data every month, which is much more than the industry figures.

Chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd, Mukesh Ambani announced of launching 5G by Diwali this year. After the launch of 5G, it is expected that the data consumption will increase. The Ericsson Mobility Report recently released estimates that after the introduction of 5G, data consumption will increase by more than 2 times in the next three years.

Experts believe that due to the high performance and high speed of 5G technology, new industries will flourish which will attract a large number of users. Also, a sharp increase in the demand for videos is also expected, due to which the demand for data will further increase.

Reliance Jio is mastering in technology such as Connected Drones, Connected Ambulances- Hospitals, Connected Farms-Barns, Connected Schools-Colleges, Ecommerce Ease, Entertainment at Incredible Speed, Robotics, Cloud PC, Virtual Things with Immersive Technology and others.

When Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani launched Jio 6 years ago, no one could have guessed that within a few years of its launch, Jio would become one of the largest telecom companies not only in the country but also in the world. Today Jio occupies 36% market share in India with 41.30 million mobiles and around 7 million JioFiber customers. Its share in terms of revenue is 40.3%. Thanks to Jio’s indigenous 5G technology, the picture of what changes will or can come in the coming times is visible in the achievements of the company in the last 6 years.

How life changed in 6 years

1. Free Calling – The cost of buying a mobile reduced

Thanks to Jio the outgoing voice calls were made free of cost in India. As an impact, buying a mobile became affordable. Mobile bills too come down drastically. Jio’s free outgoing calls put a lot of pressure on other operators, and they too had to change their strategy and reduce their tariffs.

2. Data became affordable

In six years, the data prices fell drastically. Before Jio was launched, customers were paying about Rs 350 for 1 GB. The result of Jio’s war on data prices brought the cost of 1 GB, that too 4G at around just Rs 13. The price of data fell by about 95% in 6 years. This makes data prices in India one the lowest among the world’s major countries.

3. Backbone of Digital Economy and Life of E commerce

Reliance Jio remained the backbone of the Indian digital economy. The awareness gained from the government efforts and the affordable data of Jio gave life to the digital economy. At the time of Jio’s launch in September 21016, only 32.64 crore transactions were done through UPI. Coming to August 2022, there was a huge increase in this, today UPI transactions are of 10.72 lakh crores. The reason is clear, in the last 6 years, not only did the broadband subscribers increased from 19.23 million in September 2016 to nearly 800 million by end of June 2022.  And at the same time, the average internet speed also increased by 5 times from 5.6 Mbps (March 2016) to 23.16 Mbps (April 2022).

4. Rise in Unicorn companies

Today India is home to 105 unicorn companies with valuation of more than $338 billion. Before the launch of Jio, there used to be only 4 unicorn companies in India. Unicorns are actually called startup companies whose net worth crosses $1 billion. In the year 2021, 44 startups have made their place in the list of unicorn companies. The newly created Unicorn attributes its success to Jio. After the bumper listing of unicorn company Zomato in the stock market, Zomato founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal officially thanked Jio.

5. JioPhone – India’s first 4G feature smartphone – Connecting crores to the digital world

About 500 million people in the country were using the old and expensive 2G phone just for voice calls. As the other phones were bit expensive, they did not have the money to buy phones running on 4G. Jio came up the solution for them by launching 4G JioPhone at affordable rates. JioPhone proved to be the most successful mobile phone ever in the Indian market. It has sold more than 11 crore units and connected millions of marginalized people to the digital world.

6. JioFiber, the ultimate solution during pandemic

Jio’s fiber service had emerged as a big support in the country facing the brunt of the lockdown. Work from home, class from home or e-shopping, JioFiber did let the work stop with its reliable service and speed. In just three years, 70 lakh campuses have been connected to JioFiber. The culture of work from home was so liked by the companies that even after the lockdown, many companies are emphasizing on work from home only. Apart from making life easier, JioFiber is also indirectly generating employment. The numerous Internet, e-commerce, home delivery and entertainment companies that have emerged over the years have given jobs to thousands – millions.

DeshGujarat