Jio AirFiber became the world’s fastest home broadband service to cross 10 million subscribers, the company said. Its overall subscriber base had swelled past the 500 million mark previously, making it the world’s second-largest single country operator. At December-end, its subscriber base was 515 million, according to financial results released on Friday.
The Mukesh Ambani-owned telecom operator is slated to list on Indian stock exchanges by June at a valuation of $135-180 billion, making it India’s largest listing.
For the December quarter, JPL’s revenue from operations stood ₹37,262 crore, up 12.7% from a year earlier, on strong user additions across mobility and home segments, and improvement in average revenue per user (ARPU).
“Jio’s digital ecosystem is deepening its roots in India households,” said Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries. “Through our mobility and broadband products, we are connecting mobile phones, homes, appliances and enterprises,” he said, adding that synergies between connectivity and media platforms had meaningfully increased customer engagement.
“This quarter, Jio expanded its subscriber base further, through attractive propositions enabled by its comprehensive, indigenous technology stack tailored for Indian markets,” he said.
Third-quarter profit jumps 11.2% Y-o-Y to ₹7,629 cr as user base rises to over 500 m
The company’s ARPU for its telecom business under Reliance Jio Infocomm went up 1.1% sequentially to ₹213.7 in the third quarter of this fiscal, in line with analyst expectations, from ₹211.4 in the previous quarter, as more users upgraded to higher priced data plans. Jio, however, still lagged rival Bharti Airtel’s ARPU of ₹256 a month in the September-October period. The Sunil Mittal-led telco is yet to report its third quarter results.
Swelling Subscriber Base
During the three-month period, Jio gained 8.9 million users, boosting its overall base to 515.3 million, as the telco continued to gain users, mainly from financially stressed Vodafone Idea and state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL).
The company ended the quarter with 253 million 5G subscribers. 5G now contributes 53% of Jio’s total wireless traffic, driven by growth in user engagement.
During the quarter, total connected premises with fixed broadband increased to 25.3 million. JioAirFiber base stood at 11.5 million as of December-end.
“Jio’s over 500 million subscriber base, deep customer insights and pan-India distribution network will empower Reliance Intelligence to achieve its aim to make India not just AI-enabled but AI-empowered-where every citizen and enterprise can harness AI tools to create, innovate and grow,” said Akash Ambani, chairman, Reliance Jio Infocomm, adding that this will drive sustained value creation for stakeholders in the coming years.
Jio is also deepening customer engagement through bundled digital services, including partnerships with global technology players, said Anshuman Thakur, head of strategy at Reliance Jio.
Last year, the company rolled out free Google Gemini Pro for Jio’s unlimited 5G users, calling it a “win-win relationship”.
“It’s now in the tens of millions of users who are taking up this opportunity,” Thakur said during the company’s investor presentation.
He added that the partnership not only enhances customer value but also provides Jio with “a lot of intelligence about what’s going on the network, what consumers are doing.”
JPL’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) margin expanded by 20 basis points to 51.8% sequentially and 170 basis points from a year ago. A basis point is a hundredth of a percentage point.
Per capita data consumption at December-end grew to 40.7 GB per month, from 38.7 GB per month three months earlier, as a result of an expansion of Jio’s 5G services and increased consumption by fibre-to-home users.
Total wireless data consumption increased to 62.3 billion GB from 58.4 billion GB in the preceding quarter, while voice consumption went up to 1.53 trillion minutes from 1.50 trillion minutes.