Reliance Jio, the telecom arm of Reliance Industries (RIL), is witnessing the largest migration from free to paid services, RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani said while announcing the organisation's fourth quarter results on Monday.
Since rolling out services on September 5, 2016, Jio has clocked 108.9 million subscribers on its network as of March 31, 2017. After crossing 50 million users in 83 days, it touched the 100-million mark in 170 days at an average rate of six lakh subscribers per day.
While Jio provided free services for the initial months as part of its Welcome and Happy New Year promotional offers, it has moved to a paid model over the past couple of months. The paid plans started with Jio Prime membership, which involved paying a one-time fee of Rs 99 to gain access to a host of Jio services till March 31, 2018.
"During the quarter, Jio announced industry redefining tariff plans as it embarked upon the world’s largest migration from free to paid services," said Ambani.
Earlier this month, Ambani said that 72 million subscribers had taken up Prime membership. Jio also announced tariff plans in April. As part of its Summer Surprise and Dhan Dhana Dhan offers, users who recharged for Rs 300 and above received benefits such as unlimited free voice calls and SMSes and 1GB data daily.
Reliance said the network was prepared for future challenges too.
"Jio has built a future ready network which can easily deploy 5G and beyond technology in the last leg," stated an RIL media release. " Jio has the world’s largest greenfield 4G LTE wireless broadband network, with over 100,000 mobile towers. And it will add another 100,000 towers to the network in the coming months."
Disclosure: Reliance Industries, the parent firm of Jio, owns Network 18 that publishes Moneycontrol.com
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