Reliance Jio's broadband plans are out: Can it revolutionise home broadband like it did with mobile internet?

Key Highlights

• JioFiber is expected to launch around Diwali.
• Sneak peek into JioFiber's plan might be the cheapest option.
• Jio already dominates nearly 40% of wireless broadband market.

When Reliance Jio launched in September last year there were over 100 crore mobile connections in India. It would seem like the market of garnering mobile phone connections was exhausted but with the introduction of its free services and discounts it managed to not only gain market share among the top 4 telecom companies but also the number one spot in wireless broadband subscriber base.
 
Data traffic jumped 400% after Jio blew the competition open with free 4G data on its network. 

In his speech on February 21, Mukesh Ambani, MD Reliance Industries Ltd said, “Remember before Jio, India was 150th in the world in broadband penetration. But, last month just five months after Jio’s launch Jio users consumed more than 100 crore GB of data on the Jio network!”

“It is heartening to see six-fold increase in data traffic in India from 561 million GB in the first quarter to 2988 million GB in the third quarter of 2016-17, which is a whopping 400 % jump,” Manoj Sinha, Minister of Communications said today while announcing the innards of the new telecom policy.
 
Reliance Jio users gobbled 3.3 crore GB data per day and succeeded China’s data usage by 50% and was equivalent to United States’ data usage patterns, Ambani added in February.
 
Now Reliance Jio is readying to launch its broadband services. Media reports suggest that the company has decided to offer its broadband services for free for the first three months. Even the money that the company is expected to charge is nominal when compared to other broadband companies in India. 

JioFiber'S plan would offer 100GB of data per month at 100Mbps of speed for three months for free, a report by MediaNama said.

ALSO READ: JioFiber plans revealed: 100GB at 100Mbps speed free for 3 months
 
In comparison for upto 100Mbps speed, in certain cities, Bharti Airtel charges Rs 1599 and provides 160GB data plus bonus data of 1000 GB available till March 31, 2018.
 
MTNL offers 100Mbps download speeds up to 375 GB for Rs 4,999 per month. Whereas YOU broadband offered 250GB data at 100Mbps for Rs 1613 per month.
 
Jio is currently the market leader in wireless broadband services with 11.25 crore subscribers. 
 
It has a market share of 39.60% followed by Airtel at 18.38% (wireless plus wired).
 
As per Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) there were only 1.82 crore wired broadband connections in India.
 

Image Source: TRAI website
 
In the wired broadband market BSNL still remains on top with 98.7 lakh subscribers and Airtel that had 20.9 lakh.
 
Is the industry ready to take on another price war from Jio?