NEW DELHI: The entry of Reliance Jio in 2016 with its extremely affordable 4G data plans and the ensuing tariff war has seen mobile data costs for subscribers plunge 94.7 per cent between 2015 and 2018, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said in a report today.
According to the telecom regulator, the average cost to subscribers for each gigabyte (GB) of wireless (mobile) data has gone from Rs 226 in 2015 to Rs 19.35 in 2017 and just Rs 11.78 per GB in 2018. “After the entry of a new telecom player in wireless telecom service with state-of-the-art 4G technology in 2016, the average cost to subscriber for wireless data has steeply declined during 2017 and 2018, due to intense tariff competition in the telecom service sector,” TRAI said.
The Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd had launched Reliance Jio on September 5, 2016, pushing incumbents like Bharti Airtel and the now merged Vodafone Idea to rapidly cut down cost of their mobile data packages.
While both the companies have been forced into taking losses over the last few quarters, the TRAI report indicates that even as data costs have plunged for users, the average revenue gained by telcos from mobile data has also increased. “Average revenue per wireless data subscribers (data ARPU) per month rose from Rs 79.98 in 2017 to Rs 90.61 in 2018. It was recorded Rs 71.25 per wireless data subscriber per month in 2014,” TRAI said.
India’s data consumption has also soared over last few years, boosted by the rising penetration of smartphones and cheap mobile data tariffs.