Reliance Jio Q3 2019 results: Reveals ‘elimination’ of 22.3 million users

Reliance Jio on Friday announced its subscriber base has reached 370 million as of December 31, 2019. The telco added 14.8 million users during the third quarter of FY20. Jio however said there was an "elimination" of 22.3 million users this quarter.

Jio also said there was an elimination of 22.3 million subscribers during this quarter owing to TRAI's decision of reviewing IUC charges. These users were primarily heavy voice users. Jio's outgoing traffic in overall offnet traffic also reduced to 48% by the end of the quarter due to IUC charges. Jio started charging users for voice calls after TRAI's decision to review IUC charges. IUC is basically the cost paid by one mobile telecom operator to another when its customers make outgoing mobile calls to the other operator's customers.

At the same time, Jio added 14.8 million users to reach a subscriber base of 370 million. Jio ended the previous quarter with 355.2 million subscribers as on September 30, 2019. Jio said there was a strong gross addition of 37.1 million during this quarter. The telco added 135.7 million subscribers during the previous 12 months.

Data consumption still remains key for Jio consumers with average data consumption per user per month of 11.1GB. Voice consumption on Jio is at an average of 760 minutes per user per month.