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Reliance Jio's Q3 net profit climbs to $119m while ARPU declines

The Indian telco has posted net profit of $119 million, an increase of 65 percent year on year.
Written by Campbell Kwan, Contributor

Reliance Jio has reported net profit of 831 crore rupees ($119.3 million) for the third quarter of 2018, an increase of 65 percent from the corresponding period from last year.

The operating revenue of Jio for this quarter increased by 50.9 percent to 10,383 crore rupees ($1.49 billion) during the period ending December 31, 2018, compared to the 6,879 crore rupees ($987.7 million) of the year prior.

The average revenue per user (ARPU) for the Indian telco declined 15.5 percent to 130 rupees ($1.87) per subscriber per month, against 154 rupees ($2.21) in the corresponding period a year prior.

Despite the decline in Jio's ARPU figures, the company has continued to profit due to the increase in the company's customer base to just over 280 million. During the third quarter alone, Jio added 28 million subscribers, taking the amount of net subscribers added over the past 12 months to 120 million subscribers.

Data consumption on the Jio network more than doubled to 8.64 exabytes during the quarter, compared with 4.31 exabytes a year ago, with video consumption on its network growing proportionately to 4.6 billion hours per month.

The average data consumed per user per month on the Jio network reached 10.8GB, from 9.6GB.

Jio said it is the only pan-India network offering 4G across the 800MHz, 1800MHz, and 2300MHz spectrum bands, as well as having fastest download speeds over the last 23 months with an average download speed of 18.7Mbps during December.

In November, OpenSignal published a report on Indian mobile telecommunications, calling Jio "remarkable" and "hugely impressive" with its rapid rate of customer growth. OpenSignal said it scored 96.7 percent on 4G availability, trailed by more than 20 percentage points by Airtel, on 73.99 percent; Idea, on 73.17 percent; and Vodafone, on 72.59 percent.

"The operator has managed to achieve availability scores of over 95 percent in all of India's regions, despite huge variations in topography, and in the face of massive increases in subscribers and data consumption," OpenSignal said.

Jio has also continued to work on its 4G availability, and said it is on track to have 99 percent coverage over the next few months. 

The 4G-only operator Jio was formed in 2016 by oil and telco billionaire Mukesh D Ambani, who ramped up by offering low-cost bundles.

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