The Institute For Competitiveness, in a report, said Reliance Jio’s entry in India’s telecom market in 2016 led to $10 billion in annual savings for India and an unprecedented surge in data consumption.
According to the report, Jio made Internet and data affordable and accessible and this led to a $10 billion annual savings for India and an unprecedented surge in data consumption. This drop in cost brought the internet within the reach of a larger proportion of the Indian population. In a report released on Thursday, the International Finance Corporation said, “Within six months of Jio’s launch, India became the highest mobile data user in the world, consuming over 1 billion GB of data every month compared to 200 million GB earlier.”
IFC’s report further states assuming that every consumer uses 1 GB of data a month, this would translate to financial gains to the economy by estimating the benefit to all 350 million internet subscribers in the country. Changing the dynamic of the telecom industry completely, Jio triggered a tariff war unlike any other helping India dethrone the US in app downloads and coming in second only to China.
As per most recent estimates, the Mukesh Ambani led, Jio users on an average consume almost 10 GB of data, 700 minutes of voice and 134 hours of video every month. In a recent event, Mukesh Ambani, speaking about Jio, also said, “Today Jio is not the largest network in India, it is the largest network in the world. Jio has made voice free for life.” IFC also claims Jio will help expand India’s per capita GDP by about 5.65% in the coming years if everything else is kept constant in the economy.
Using data from 18 states for the period 2004 to 2014, IFC analyzed Jio’s entry to measure the impact of internet penetration on economic growth. The analysis showed a 10% increase in internet penetration that led to a per capita GDP growth by 3.9%.