Reliance Jio saw its average data consumption per user, per month fall to 10.8 GB in the December quarter from 11 GB in the September quarter. This assumes significance as it follows a government ban on pornographic websites.
Confirming the development, Anshuman Thakur, head of strategy and planning, Reliance Jio, told The Hindu, “Yes, you can say that.
“It’s a marginal dip. We are looking at various ways to drive our data consumption. Jio phone users data consumption is almost at par with any smart phone user.”
Court orders ban
In a judgment on September 28, 2018, the Uttarakhand High Court had directed Internet service providers (ISPs) to abide by the Union government’s order to ban hundreds of pornographic sites. Back in August 2015, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had directed the ISPs to block more than 800 websites showing porn, or face the risk of losing their licences.
Following this, Reliance Jio has been blocking hundreds of such websites on its network since October, 2018.
Reliance Jio also saw its net subscriber addition slowing to 27.9 million during the December quarter compared with 37 million during the September quarter, which was the highest in any quarter since the launch of commercial services.
“Customer engagement stayed healthy with average data consumption per user per month of 10.8 GB and average voice consumption of 794 minutes per user per month.
Video consumption
Video consumption drove most of the usage, increasing to 460 crore hours per month,” said Reliance Jio in its earnings release.
In its financial results for the September quarter, Reliance Jio had said customer engagement continued to grow with average data consumption per user per month of 11 GB and average voice consumption of 761 minutes per user per month.
In the September quarter, video consumption had driven most of the usage, increasing to 410 crore hours per month; average video consumption was 17.5 hours per subscriber per month.