Even as it gears for a full commercial launch, the dates for which have not being finalised yet, the average data usage per subscriber of Reliance Jio stands at 18.6 GB, thanks to the free limited offer for staff and their friends, company sources said.

As per internal data accessed by IANS, the total users of Jio 4G services were 700,000 and their total usage put together was 13 million GB, which translates into 18.57 GB per user, as per the internal data.

“In some of the circles, we have even surpassed the third leading operator of that circle in terms of cumulative data usage. In Gujarat, for example, the third largest operator generates 1.5 million GB monthly, whereas we have generated 1.8 million GB,” one source said.

“At this rate, we expect that by next month we will be the leading player in terms of subscriber data-use even before our full commercial launch. We expect to touch 2.5 million users and we are potentially looking at 50 million GB,” the source added.

Queried if this was also the result of the company offering its service free during its limited launch, the source conceded: “Yes, that could be the case. But only in terms of data usage. The speeds that our limited users are experiencing is several times the national average.”

The fresh data comes against the backdrop of an Ericsson predicting smartphone subscriptions and total mobile traffic to increase four-fold and fifteen-fold respectively from 2015 to 2021, with 810 million users.

It expected 4G services to also gain momentum with such subscriptions accounting for 65 percent of the total Indian subscriptions by 2021.

“Data traffic per active smartphone is expected to increase five-fold from 1.4 GB per month in 2015 to 7 GB per month by 2021. In 2021, 99 percent of the region’s mobile traffic will be from data,” the report said.

According to the report, Indian smartphone users have also rated data as more important than voice in their scheme of things, indicating the strong uptake of data services in the country.

IANS