India's newest 4G carrier Reliance Jio shakes up the entire country
The launch of Reliance Jio’s 4G LTE network in India has jolted the telecom market in the country. The impact of Jio’s free and unlimited voice calls and cheap data tariffs is not only helping the new entrant win new customers, but is also reflecting on how the market perceives other incumbent carriers.
In the aftermath of Jio’s nation-wide commercial launch in the country, India’s largest telecom operator Airtel is seeing a significant dip in its market value. Bharti Airtel’s stocks were down by 6.48 percent at the time of writing this story. Idea, which has over 100 million subscribers took a 10.9 percent hit.
Stocks of Tata Communications, another major player in the country, is down by 2.55 percent, whereas Vodafone, which has over 150 million mobile subscribers in India, is observing a drop of 1.87 percent on the London Stock Exchange. India is one of the biggest markets for Newbury, U.K. based Vodafone.
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In the meanwhile, existing telecom operators are treading carefully with how they react to Jio's arrival in the market. “We welcome Reliance Jio’s entry to the digital world and wish them the very best. We also welcome Jio’s call to leading operators to work together. As a responsible operator we will fulfill all our regulatory obligations as we have always done,” Airtel said in a statement.
“Over the last 20 years, Airtel has been contributing towards building a digitally enabled India and remains fully committed to and take leadership in supporting the Government’s Digital India vision. We will continue to innovate and deliver best-in-class products and services to our customers,” the company added.
Without acknowledging Jio, Vodafone said it will continue to offer “great value” to its subscribers in the country. “We have always offered great value to our customers, backed by excellent customer service, a nationwide presence, and Vodafone SuperNeT our best network ever. We will continue to do so for our hundreds of million customers across the country.”
Vodafone, Airtel and Idea recently revised their data plans ahead of Jio's commercial launch. But even after cutting some of their data tariffs by more than 50 percent, they can't seem to be matching Jio's 1GB data for 75 cents offering.
In the meanwhile, Jio has been the talking point on social media all day today, and nearly everyone seems pleased with Jio's commercial launch. Following are some tweets that offer more insight into what today's announcement means to them and others.
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