178 crore hours of video, 378 crore GB of data behind Reliance Jio's Rs 271 crore loss

The ripples Reliance Jio created in the telecom sector apparently came for a price. Reliance Industries released the financial results of its subsidiary Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited the first time and the telecom disruptor posted a net loss of Rs 270.59 crore during the September quarter of the current fiscal.

While Reliance Jio, which had the telecom sector in an uproar for the past year, made a loss the silver lining is that analysts expected things to be even worse.

What do the numbers hold?

Standalone revenue for Reliance Jio stood at Rs 6,147.06 for FY18 Q2, according to a statement by Reliance Industries. In the first quarter since Reliance Jio started charging for its services, it accumulated Rs 7,197.08 crore as value of services. The company paid services tax/ GST to the tune of Rs 1050.02 crore during the second quarter of financial year 2017-18.

Notably, the telecom arm of Reliance Industries registered positive EBIT and EBITDA in its very first quarter since closing down free data services. Standalone EBITDA for Reliance Jio stood at Rs 1,443 crore with EBITDA margin of 23.5 per cent. On the other hand, the telecom operator posted EBIT of Rs 260 crore with EBIT margin of 4.2 per cent.

Jio's customer base

In a little over than one year, Reliance Jio has managed to create a customer base of 138.6 million subscribers, stated the company report. Reliance Jio is confident that its "customer growth and revenues reflect customer acceptance of Jio's services".

A total of 19.5 million new customers joined the Jio network during the September quarter, whereas 4.2 million Jio users switched to other networks during the same period. Thus, the net subscriber addition during the quarter stood at 15.3 million, according the company statement. Monthly customer churn - amount of users who left the network in a month - of 1 per cent was recorded, which Jio expects to lower in days to come.

At the end of the last quarter, Reliance Jio registered Average Revenue per User (ARPU) of Rs 156.4 per subscriber every month.

What Jio offered

According to Jio's financial report, the telecom start-up saw total wireless data traffic during the FY18 Q2 at 378 crore GB, whereas the average voice traffic during the same period at 267 crore minutes every day. The company also claimed to have posted highest per capita data consumption at 9.62 GB for each user and 178 crore hours of high speed data consumption every month.

Reliance Jio, which presently operates solely on the 4G network also claims to have the technical ability to easily switch to 5G network. Also, with the launch of JioPhone, and creating a strong data network with infrastructure and backhaul for offering wireless services, wireline services, FTTH, Enterprise offering, IOT services and other digital services. These will lead to further data consumption on the network.

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