In a presentation to investors, telecom operator Reliance Jio says that the industry is headed for a “revenue transition” from voice to data within the next 1-2 years. Jio estimates that voice revenue share will reduce from Rs 1.5 lakh crore to Rs 0.5 lakh crore, boosting data revenue share up to Rs 1.3 lakh crore. The Mukesh Ambani-led telecom company added that overall revenue of the industry might grow up to Rs 3 lakh crore by 2020 due to rising demand for data. Jio said in the presentation that the demand for data could grow up to 5-6 billion GB a month by 2020. “At a yield of Rs 50/GB it translates to Rs 3.0 - 3.6 lakh crore/year,” the telco mentioned. Post launch of Jio, rival operators including Airtel, Idea, and Vodafone posted a steep decline in data revenues, while voice usage remained flat. Due to this, incumbents have launched their own version of bundled data packs, mirroring Jio’s tariff strategy. Therefore, the data-led pricing strategy is expected to change how companies offer cellular services to end consumers. RCOM’s CEO Gurdeep Singh had pointed a similar theory during a recent analyst call. He said that the telecom industry has shifted from being a tariff-based business to “a capacity and a volume-led play” wherein “the pricing structure is getting transferred from per minute or a per MB to ARPU-led structure.” This means that telcos will focus on retaining users with attractive pricing and more data usage in packs, in order…
