Reliance Jio adds 10.2 million customers in Dec quarter

The telecom arm of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) Reliance Jio reported an increase in net profit by 10% year-on-year to Rs 3,615 crore for the quarter ended December 2021 as opposed to Rs 3,291 crore in the same period last year. Its revenue from operations rose 5% to Rs19,347 crore as against Rs18,492 crore in the last year period. Jio's total customer base as on 31st December 2021 stands at 421.0 million with net addition of 10.2 million customers on year-on-year (YoY) basis. 

“Our digital services business has delivered broad based, sustainable, and profitable growth through improved customer engagement and subscriber mix,” said Mukesh D. Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries Limited said in a statement.

Jio recently undertook ~20% hike across prepaid plans effective 1st December 2021 which is in line with other industry operators. Jio’s new plans continue to provide the best value for consumers in the industry across price points. “Most operators have been under severe strain especially with lot of the liabilities towards the government. The government has helped to defer a lot of those liabilities into the future. All actions taken by the government are quite positive to strengthen India’s telecom sector,” Kiran Thomas, Director, Jio. He added that despite tariff hikes, Jio continues to deliver the best value to consumers.

Most of the operators have taken tariff hikes which should result in a significant revenue boost, Thomas said. “Full impact of tariff hike to be reflected in ARPU (average revenue per unit) and financials over next few quarters,” he added.

Jio maintained its top position in the 4G speed chart with a 22.0 Mbps average download speed in December 2021, according to data published by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). “We’re also fine-tuning our 5G technology. We’re well positioned because of our feature-ready network and digital ecosystem that we’ve put in place to be able to make that transition pretty quickly and seamlessly,” Thomas said.

During the quarter, Jio and Google also announced the launch of JioPhone Next. “This is the most affordable smartphone anywhere in the world with an entry price of only Rs 1,999 and the rest paid via easy EMI over 18/24 months. A unique financing option like this is introduced for the first time for a device in this category, making it accessible for a much wider set of consumers,” the company said.