Its been a month almost Reliance Jio is launched. Shall we call it a failure or a success? Having a look at the standard three parameters - reliability, affordability and availability, its a flop on two counts and there is nothing to comment since it is free on the moment.
Let's go for the good points fist before bashing the world's largest startup. The primary aim was to scale up to 10 crore customers as early as possible. Assuming the network is reliable and speed is as proclaimed, people would want to migrate to Jio. This presents two kinds of problems for other service providers - since Jio operates on VoLTE and since data, for the time being, is free, we would see people making less calls from other service providers. On the other side, since this results in lesser patronage among customers, there is no reason for a dealer to continue his dealership. Meaning, after the end of three months, we would be seeing no one will be ready to sell an Airtel or Idea sim card or a top up. Getting that share of the market is going to be very hard. Next is the beauty of simcard activation - finger print authentication for the Aadhar Card. Just have your card with you and if it is genuine, your fingerprint will match. I dont know whether this is one of the main purposes of Aadhar, but this single act is going to revolutionize identity verification in India. Now, the other side of the coin.
Reliance Jio came into market with one single aim - kill the market and take its place. For that to happen, you need to flood the market with sim cards. Had you done that, we would have seen people migrate fast. But well, how many would want to stand in a line for long or how many would want to go to the stores day after day to get a sim? Did they misjudge the volume, did they misjudge the target audience, who will tell?
Next is the problem of reliability. The number of interconnects provided is far less than Jio actually wants. Even though this is beta testing and even though other companies are crooked enough to try to kill Jio illegally, will an average customer understand that?
Next comes coverage. Chennai, I got a full coverage. But, the speed is atrocious. Warangal, even though the signal strength is better, the signal doesn't last for more than two minutes. I will have to put the phone into flight mode again and again. And the speed, even atrocious than that of Chennai. I understand that the speed is dependent on number of parallel users. Was this heavy usage not accounted for?
Next comes the availability of sim cards itself. Shortages apart, there is another big problem with the sim cards. Sim card gets activated only if you use a sim card of that particular state. In a country where change is led by the IT corridors which constitute at least 20-30% people from outside the state, how justified is this stand? May be, its an attempt for load balancing. But, the impacted parties are those who use it the most. This is another Jio should think about. Now, what's the alternate? I can ask a local to get me a sim on my pphone number. An Aadhar card can fetch you nine in total. Fine. But, is it correct to hold an obliging friend accountable for my mistakes? Rather, it should have been that his Aadhar can be used as a reference for my Aadhar.
Next. When are we getting number portability? Half of those stuck with their numbers will hesitate to move to Jio even if it is a success just because of that.
The final bit is the cost part post free lunch. 299 for a 21 day package for 4 GB is OK. This is OK only if the the total phone bill for a person talking at least two hours a day fits under a GB, meaning it should be no more than 150 or 200 KB per minute. I will trust Jio only when I am confident on this single point. And I will hope that Jio will be a market killer in the home turfs of entities like Vodafone. A bit more responsibility and a bit more focus on what you have today can do wonders.
Let's go for the good points fist before bashing the world's largest startup. The primary aim was to scale up to 10 crore customers as early as possible. Assuming the network is reliable and speed is as proclaimed, people would want to migrate to Jio. This presents two kinds of problems for other service providers - since Jio operates on VoLTE and since data, for the time being, is free, we would see people making less calls from other service providers. On the other side, since this results in lesser patronage among customers, there is no reason for a dealer to continue his dealership. Meaning, after the end of three months, we would be seeing no one will be ready to sell an Airtel or Idea sim card or a top up. Getting that share of the market is going to be very hard. Next is the beauty of simcard activation - finger print authentication for the Aadhar Card. Just have your card with you and if it is genuine, your fingerprint will match. I dont know whether this is one of the main purposes of Aadhar, but this single act is going to revolutionize identity verification in India. Now, the other side of the coin.
Reliance Jio came into market with one single aim - kill the market and take its place. For that to happen, you need to flood the market with sim cards. Had you done that, we would have seen people migrate fast. But well, how many would want to stand in a line for long or how many would want to go to the stores day after day to get a sim? Did they misjudge the volume, did they misjudge the target audience, who will tell?
Next is the problem of reliability. The number of interconnects provided is far less than Jio actually wants. Even though this is beta testing and even though other companies are crooked enough to try to kill Jio illegally, will an average customer understand that?
Next comes coverage. Chennai, I got a full coverage. But, the speed is atrocious. Warangal, even though the signal strength is better, the signal doesn't last for more than two minutes. I will have to put the phone into flight mode again and again. And the speed, even atrocious than that of Chennai. I understand that the speed is dependent on number of parallel users. Was this heavy usage not accounted for?
Next comes the availability of sim cards itself. Shortages apart, there is another big problem with the sim cards. Sim card gets activated only if you use a sim card of that particular state. In a country where change is led by the IT corridors which constitute at least 20-30% people from outside the state, how justified is this stand? May be, its an attempt for load balancing. But, the impacted parties are those who use it the most. This is another Jio should think about. Now, what's the alternate? I can ask a local to get me a sim on my pphone number. An Aadhar card can fetch you nine in total. Fine. But, is it correct to hold an obliging friend accountable for my mistakes? Rather, it should have been that his Aadhar can be used as a reference for my Aadhar.
Next. When are we getting number portability? Half of those stuck with their numbers will hesitate to move to Jio even if it is a success just because of that.
The final bit is the cost part post free lunch. 299 for a 21 day package for 4 GB is OK. This is OK only if the the total phone bill for a person talking at least two hours a day fits under a GB, meaning it should be no more than 150 or 200 KB per minute. I will trust Jio only when I am confident on this single point. And I will hope that Jio will be a market killer in the home turfs of entities like Vodafone. A bit more responsibility and a bit more focus on what you have today can do wonders.
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