Reliance Jio's 4G speeds improve dramatically as freeloaders drop out

Key Highlights

• Jio's internet speeds improved by 50% in six months.
• Average download speeds in May-July period for Jio was close to 6Mbps
• In the month of July 3 crore Jio subscribers remained inactive.

Reliance Jio internet speeds have increased by 50% and the company may have its freeloading subscribers to thank for it.

Over the period of six months, Jio’s average LTE download speeds increased from 4Mbps in the December- February period to near 6Mbps in May-July period, a blog post by OpenSignal said on Wednesday.

So what changed in this time?

Jio started charging for its services in April after a period of 170 days since its inception in September 2016.

“As soon as Jio’s free data offers concluded on April 1, we started recording a steady rise in average 4G speed all the way till the end of July. In the last six months, Jio’s typical 4G download has ballooned from 3.9 Mbps to 5.8 Mbps — that’s almost a 50% increase in speed, which is frankly astonishing,” OpenSignal said.

Even though Bank of America Merrill Lynch survey showed that 84% of Jio’s subscriber base would not jump ship and go back to using their own networks or other networks, a large part of Jio’s subscriber has remained inactive since January 2017.

Only 76.70% of Jio’s 12.85 crore subscriber base were active as on 31 July, 2017, as per Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) data.

This means a total of three crore subscribers were inactive.

In an earlier report Zeebiz said that only 70-75% of Jio’s subscriber base has been active since the beginning of this year.

Jio continued to extend its ‘freebie’ offers from its earlier stated deadline of December to March. As its discount season came to an end the drop in active subscriber base increased from its peak in September-December period last year of close to 99% active users.

“It could be that the customers are reining in their data use now that they actually have to pay for the megabytes and gigabytes they consume. Chances are, it’s a combination of multiple factors. The bottom line is the typical mobile data experience on Jio’s network has improved dramatically in a relatively short period of time,” the report by OpenSignal said.  

Also Read: One-fourth of Reliance Jio’s subscribers inactive since January 2017