Reliance Jio Infocomm’s tariff plans launched under the ‘Dhan Dhana Dhan’ scheme on Tuesday have failed to enthuse the industry, with Bharti Airtel terming it as “old wine in a new bottle”. Others in the industry were of opinion that RJio’s plan is much similar to its withdrawn ‘Summer Surprise’ offer.

“The industry is in a very weak position and continues to bleed. The financial impact that telcos are seeing does no good in the long-term to customers. With a weakened financial position, companies will find it difficult to raise the capital to invest and roll out broadband networks. In this context, we are surprised to see what Jio is doing,” an Airtel spokesperson said, reacting to the offer.

“It violates the spirit of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India directive and essentially continues with a similar plan now masquerading under a different name. This is a classic example of old wine in a new bottle. We hope that the authority will act against this provocative disregard of their direction,” the spokesperson added. RJio on Tuesday launched its ‘Dhan Dhana Dhan’ offer, withdrawing its ‘Summer Surprise’ offer.

Brokerage firm JP Morgan also mirrored the sentiment. “Essentially, the offer seems broadly similar as the ‘Summer Surprise’. Instead of explicitly calling its offer as being complimentary for 90 days, RJio has now extended the life of the new offer to three months. The new promotional offer is quite clearly far more aggressive than the high-consumption data plans peers (Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular) offer,” JP Morgan said in a report.

“RJio’s new offerings are as attractive and disruptive as the Jio Summer Surprise (from a monthly charge perspective). They are at a 40 per cent discount to Airtel’s ARPU (Quarter ended December 2016) and will continue to put pressure on its ARPUs,” Morgan Stanley said in a report.

Data capacity

“At present, Jio has the highest data capacity of 53.96 terabyte per day (TB/day). This is 14 per cent higher than Bharti and 147 per cent higher than Idea. However, upon completion of the Idea-Vodafone India merger, we calculate the combined entity could generate the highest network capacity at 69.54 TB/day (29 per cent higher than Jio),” Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a report.

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