Airtel ranks 1st spot on data usage, Reliance jio 6th

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's telecom arm Reliance Jio even before its commercial launch has climbed up to sixth position on data usage as its pilot launch saw users downloading more as against some industry players.

While Airtel continues to lead with 45 million gigabyte (GB) of data usage per month in the March quarter, Jio is ranked sixth with 13 million GB, according to latest data available with the company.

For the quarter in question, Airtel had about 55 million users with a monthly usage of 45 million GB. Vodafone's 47 million users downloaded 28 million GB of data at an average 0.6 GB per user.

Jio, which has done a pilot launch for its employees and their relatives and friends, saw its 70 lakh users download 13 million GB of data at an average of 19.2 GB per user.

The company is offering the service free to its employees and at a nominal cost to their relatives. The speed of 4G is also said to be behind the high data usage.

Taken together, India had 278 million data users in the said quarter downloading 202 million GB at an average of 0.7 GB per user.

According to the data, Jio generated as much as 1.8 million GB monthly data usage in a few states like Gujarat. The company is eyeing 2.5 million subscribers before it commercially launches operations in the next few months.

At 2.5 million users, it is estimated to generate 50 million GB of monthly data. Insiders said Jio's ultimate aim is to take this figure to 1 billion GB from a base of 100 million subscribers within a year of launch.

The data further showed that Jio network racking up an average of 1.89 GB downloaded per user everyday nationally. The highest came in Kashmir, with an average download of 3.48 GB a day, followed by the North-East with 2.52 GB and Rajasthan 2.44 GB.

Jammu registered 2.4 GB of daily data usage for the telecom venture while Jharkhand, Assam, Odisha, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh-West, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh-East saw more than 2 GB per user per day.

The lowest usage was recorded at 0.89 GB per user per day in Goa while it was below national average in Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Delhi, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kolkata, Telangana and Mumbai.

Voice usage per subscriber per day averaged 25 minutes nationally, with Delhi topping the chart with 31 minutes. Odisha was a close second with 30 minutes, followed by Bihar (29 minutes) and Jharkhand and Kolkata (28 minutes each).

The lowest voice usage, according to the data, came from Kerala, Maharashtra and Gujarat at 18 minutes per user per day.