Mukesh Ambani’s Jio has become the darling of more than 900 million mobile users across India thanks to its free offers – despite the huge credibility and quality of service (QoS) crisis.

The billionaire business man was happy to announce the 16 million subscribers for its free services.

“We are delighted and humbled by the enthusiastic adoption of Jio by India. Jio is built to empower every Indian with the power of data,” said Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, today while announcing the financial result of RIL.

What Jio achieved?

Jio has added 16 million subscribers to its all India 4G network. India has nearly 900 million mobile customers. The telecom industry is not taking this number very seriously at present because Jio is offering free SIM cards and connections to all (who have 4G smartphones) till 31 December, 2016.

Considering the fact that China Mobile has added only 51 million 4G subscribers in the last three months, the addition of 16 million 4G subscribers in the first month alone is a big achievement for Reliance Jio. China Mobile lost considerable number of 3G subscribers as well.

ALSO READ: China Mobile adds 51 million 4G subscribers in 3 months

Jio has achieved this growth faster than any other telecom operator or technology companies such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Skype.

In the first week from launch, all the 12 Jio applications were ranked in the top 15 applications on Playstore and Appstore.

Jio faces quality issues

Jio’s 16 million customers faced call drops, while several thousands faced shortage of SIM cards. Some bought SIMs for a price. Jio could not control the price of the free SIMs available in the Indian telecom market.

Media reports said that small dealers claimed getting Jio SIM cards was a challenge even for those who were selling the handsets bundled with the SIM card. In some cases, unauthorised dealers were also selling SIM cards for Rs 150 to Rs 400.

Though there were several media announcements on lack of interconnection support from rival telecoms including Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone, mobile Indians felt Jio’s 4G network was not up to the mark.

Jio admitted that call failure rates continue to be severe with over 75 calls failing out of every 100 call attempts on the networks of some of the operators. This is in breach of Quality of Service regulation that not more than 5 calls out of every 1,000 call attempts can fail.

While Jio re-iterated that it has rolled out the best network in India, rivals did not pass the benefits of superior voice technology to its customers due to the POI congestion. This means, Indian public  could not benefit from free voice and data services.

Speedtest by Ookla, has publicly stated that Jio 4G speeds over the past month have drastically come down.

India’s telecom regulator TRAI has sought an explanation from Reliance Jio Infocomm over its offer of free-calling as it differed from the Rs 1.20-per-minute voice tariff plan reported to the regulator. Jio officials reportedly may soon make changes in their tariffs, which would be conveyed to TRAI.

Jio buys spectrum 

Jio further increased its pan-India spectrum footprint with the acquisition of right to use 269.2 MHz for Rs 13,672 crore. Jio’s total spectrum footprint has increased to 1,108 MHz with an average life of over 16 years. Remember that Reliance Jio started the process of launching Jio 4G almost five years ago.

Thanks to huge investment, Jio is the only operator using sub-GHz spectrum band for LTE services in the country today. The combined spectrum footprint across frequency bands provides significant network capacity and deep in-building coverage.

Mukesh Ambani is well known for doing business in India. But this time, his telecom venture is facing huge crisis because millions want to connect and start utilizing free voice and data. These mobility-driven Indians are unable to connect using Jio network.

Vina Krishnan and Baburajan K
[email protected]