Reliance Jio, the largest mobile operator in India, added 81 million mobile users in the year to end-March and nearly tripled profit in its fiscal Q4 (calendar Q1), as rivals struggled with falling profitability and shed customers.
Net profit in fiscal Q4 increased 177.5 per cent year-on-year to INR23.3 billion (US$308.4 million), with operating revenue growing 26.6 per cent to INR148 billion.
For its fiscal 2020, net profit rose 88 per cent to INR55.6 billion.
Its subscriber base grew 26.3 per cent to 388 million at end-March, while ARPU increased 3.5 per cent to INR130.60. In fiscal Q4 alone it added 24 million subs.
In a statement, the company said it registered a significant increase in traffic during the country’s lockdown, with no drop in network performance.
Average monthly data usage per user increased to 11.3GB from 10.9GB in fiscal Q4 2019.
Next growth phase
Commenting on Facebook acquiring a 10 per cent stake for US$5.7 billion, Reliance Industries chairman and MD Mukesh Ambani said the operator is embarking on the next leg of growth with a path-defining partnership with one of the world’s largest digital companies.
“We are together determined to make India a truly digital society with best-in-class connectivity network complemented with disruptive digital technology platforms for entertainment, commerce, communication, finance, education and health harnessing world’s best tech capabilities.”
The company said INR280.6 billion (US$3.7 billion) of the injection would go to reducing debt, with the remaining INR150 billion to be retained at Jio Platforms to drive future growth.
Spain Prepares To Lift Operator Switching Restrictions
Spain’s competition authority told operators to remove all limits on consumers switching providers within five days of the end of a state of emergency in the country, having suspended rules as part of lockdown measures.
The National Commission of Markets and Competition said once an end to emergency measures related to Covid-19 (coronavirus) had been declared, operators must increase capacity for number portability by at least 15 per cent per day until they reached levels available before the crisis.
Spain’s state of emergency is scheduled to expire on 10 May, but has already been extended twice from its original period and so this date is subject to change.
As part of restrictions imposed on 17 March operators suspended all new number portability requests for both fixed and mobile services. This allowed reallocation of resources to maintaining network operation as demand for connectivity increased.
For fixed lines, suspension of switching also removed a need to send engineers to physically change providers at people’s homes.
The complete ban on porting to new service providers was eased in April, replaced by specific limits placed on the types of transfers allowed and number of switches operators could perform per day. -Mobile World Live
