Research Question:
“To what extent has the introduction of a disruptive firm with predatory pricing, like Reliance Jio affected the Indian telecommunications space?”
The Indian telecom industry is home to the world’s second and third largest telecom giants based on subscriber base, namely, the Vodafone Group PLC (VOD) and Bharti Airtel Limited respectively.
However, due to increased competitiveness and entry by large players, both domestic and foreign, the Indian telecom market is characterized by one of the lowest call tariffs globally. As expected, this results in a great deal of losses and extremely low profitability for all the players in this telecom space.
Prior to Reliance Jio’s introduction in the telecommunications space 8 years ago in 2010, the following firms existed in the space: Airtel, Aircel, Idea, Reliance Telecommunications, S Tel, Tata Teleservices and Vodafone Essar, as private firms, and BSNL and MTNL as State owned companies.
The aforementioned companies were the ones that took part in the 2010 spectrum auction (BSNL and MTNL did not participate in the auction, however were awarded spectrum after a payment directly to the Indian government). Tata Docomo was the first private operator to roll out 3G services in India.
Fast-forward to 2014, and Reliance Jio, was the only firm in to have an all India 4G license as it entered into the voice service. Subsequent years began seeing an introduction of schemes and attractive offers by Jio which might have been seen as predatory pricing. The following establishes the extent of truth to this statement.
In the interim period, where sector wise lack of infrastructure resulted in restricted growth to only the 2G and 3G sectors, while developments in LTE bandwith lacked majorly, the government approved of 100 percent foreign direct investment (FDI) in the telecom sector to be able to meet an integral deman of an industry that was extremely deprived of funds. Along with that regulation, foreign participants would no longer be required to partner with Indian investors in order to comply with local regulations.
Mukesh Ambani had famously launched a large scale project known as Reliance Infocomm in 2003-04, but had to relenquish it to brother, Anil Ambani when the Reliance Empire split in 2005. Reliance acquired Infotel Broadband Services Limited in 2010, which was the only successful bidder for pan-India 4G spectrum at the time. Mukesh Ambani had initially mentioned, in 2010, that Reliance would not partake in passive infrastructure such as optic fibre and telecom towers, however, contrary to his initial strategy, they planned to set up over 100,000 towers, whilst simultaneously doubling their capital outlay for launching.
Background
Indian Telecommunications Space
The Indian telecom space has existed since 1851 with the laying of the first operational landlines by the British government. Subsequently, post independence, all foreign telecom companies were nationalized to form a natural monopoly by the Indian government.
In the present scenario, India is the second largest telecommunications market in the world, with almost 900 million subscribers as of March 2013 and a growth in sectorial revenue of 13.4 percent, reaching 64.1 billion USD in financial year 2011-12. In the period between 2008-15, Indian telecom infrastructure was set to increase a compounded annual growth rate of almost 20 percent, reaching 571,000 towers in 2015.
According to a study conducted by Cisco, the growing Indian telecom sector means that internet traffic was expected to reach 2.5 Exabytes (109 Gigabytes) per month in 2017, from the pre existing level of a mere 393 Petabytes (106 Gigabytes).
Along with this, the rate of growth of wireless connectivity was expected to grow at approximately 40 percent in 2017, as opposed to the 2012 value of 38 percent.
Reliance Jio
Reliance Jio was founded in 2007 as a purely 4G/LTE network i.e. did not offer 2G and 3G bandwidth services. It has been buying spectrum since 2010, and covers all of the 22 telecom circles that exist in India with over 150 billion rupees being invested into wireless unit.
This entails raising capital by issuing 15 billion new shares at Rs. 10 each to existing shareholders.
In May of 2016, Jio launched a plethora of multimedia applications on the Google Play Store, which were supposed to work in conjunction with its upcoming 4G services. These applications were free for all to download, however, would require a Jio SIM card to be able to use them properly.
The list of applications provided an immense deal of functionality and appealed to a large percentage of cellphone users as a result of being compatible with almost all Android devices. This list included: My Jio, Jio Chat Messenger, Jio Security, Jio Music, Jio Xpress News, Jio 4G Voice, Jio Drive, Jio Money Wallet and Jio TV.
Due to the demography and diaspora that exists in India, telecom providers began providing low cost data plans along with many other low cost or free services to increase consumer satisfaction.
Methodology
The time frame selected is 2000-2018, because even though 2007 marked the founding of Reliance Jio in the Indian telecommunications space, a lot of data and interpretation is available before the advent of Jio, and is crucial in understanding the Indian Telecom space before and after the entry of Jio.
The main source of data is secondary data, since reports and papers published on the functioning of Jio provides a great deal of insight into how it has affected the telecommunications space.
Twelve papers and a much larger number of articles have been considered, ranging from background and data regarding the telecommunications space, till the impacts of disruptive firms in an established market structure.
Disruption
Investopedia defines the term disruption as “A situation where markets cease to function in a regular manner, typically characterized by rapid and large market declines. Market disruptions can result from both physical threats to the stock exchange or unusual trading (as in a crash). In either case, the disruption creates widespread panic and results in disorderly market conditions.”
Disruption occurs when, as a result of technological advancement or a new business model, the existing competitive setting within the industry experiences major changes with the incumbents not necessarily being able to respond effectively due to the changes, and may therefore be perceived as an opportunity or a threat.
2017 marked a record year that saw the balance sheets of a large number of telecom providers in a great deal of turmoil, with the government setting up a pane
l to chalk out plans for possible bail outs.
The introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) by the government did not help the sector either as it raised sectorial tax rates from 15 percent to 18
percent.
That being said, a few mergers and acquisitions, such as the merger of two telecom giants, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular went through. This consolidation provided hope to some of the major operators to be able to better face the challenges that the future of the sector posed, despite the cumulative debt of the telecom operators rising to approximately Rs. 4.6 lakh crore, along with falling revenues.
Sectorial adjusted gross revenue for the quarter ending in September 2017 fell to Rs. 30,579 crore, marking a year on year decrease of 18.1 percent.
The Director General of Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI) stated that “In 2018, consolidation in the sector is likely to take shape and the telcos will get the benefit of synergy in operations and the overall costs are likely to come down. Eventually, pricing power could also return, enabling longer-term sustainability overall”
Literature Review
Benefits And Adverse Effects
The entry of Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio saw a plethora of effects, both good and bad on the Indian telecommunications space. Some of these have been listed briefly below and have been elaborated on subsequently.
Benefits
• Price wars between operators would result in reduced costs to the consumers with decreased talk time and especially lower data prices.
• Increase in total subscriber base of the Indian telecommunications market.
• Increase in absolute number of subscribers for major operators.
• Decreased data costs providing growth opportunities for the online content industry in India.
• Firms would be forced to improve existing infrastructure and invest in future improvement opportunities.
• Increased teledensity in both rural and urban areas.
• Improved connectivity for poorer sectors of society that now has access to data services.
• Improved connectivity is essential in today’s setting, where better connectivity may facilitate better business opportunities as well, whilst simultaneously reducing the cost of conducting business.
• Positive externality on the market for 4G/LTE compatible handsets.
• Improved position in the stock market.
Adverse Effects
• Resultant price war between existing operators causing decrease pricing power, reduced revenue and profits.
• Increased total sectorial debt.
• Possibility of resultant monopolization and subsequent increase in prices.
• Exit or acquisitions of certain smaller operators.
Market Share And Subscriber Base
As an aggressive entrant into the Indian telecommunications space in 2016, Reliance Jio managed to capture approximately 6.4 percent market share in an extremely short period of time, based on data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
According to the same report, Bharti Airtel saw a dip in market share from 24.07% in December 2015 to 23.58% in December 2016. Similarly, Vodafone saw a fall in market share from 19.15% to 18.16% in the same time period, however it is interesting to note that despite this dip in market share, similar to Airtel, Vodafone saw an increase in consumer base by 11.09 million users.
This being said, the Indian telecom user base is so massive, that despite gaining over 72 million subscribers during Jio’s first year, the subscriber base of other majority operators wasn’t greatly affected, in fact, despite the declining levels of market share, as a proportion in the market, most major operators in the telecom space saw an uptick in their own subscriber base as a result of an increase in total subscriber base in the Indian market.
Due to the campaign that Jio ran by offering free services to new subscribers for an entire year, there was lingering doubt as to whether most users would choose to opt out of Jio’s services once this time period elapsed or if they would actually become paying customers.
This, coupled with the fact that Jio SIM cards were predominantly used as secondary SIM cards for 82% of users meant that there was a large shadow of doubt as to the success that Jio might experience in the long run as it grew as a company.
For quite a while, there had been no available data on Jio’s customer retention rate, and with an initial investment of nearly Rs. 1,50,000 crore according to Mukesh Ambani, it was necessary for Jio to succeed in the telecommunications space, and to that end would require a relatively high retention rate, or at the very least, a moderate to high Average Revenue Per User (ARPU).
Impact On The Market For LTE Compatible Handsets
The introduction and widespread adoption of 4G bandwidth would also affect consumer demand for compatiable handsets.
At the of publishing, a paper stated that under 10% of the Indian subscriber base owned 4G/LTE compatible handsets.
The sudden boom in demand for improved connectibity also greatly increased the demand for better hardware to complement the services that were being offered by leading telcom operators at the time.
Consequently, demand was bound to soar as data prices plummeted and the telecommunications space saw increased penetration.
Admittedly the domestic market saw a slight decline in sales as a result of demonetisation in late 2016 and due to the scarcity of the requisite components.
However, 2017 saw the smartphone market in the nation register an annual growth of 14% according to the Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker by the International Data Corporation (IDC). This uptick was seen after a consistent decline for the last three years.
Based on the most recent numbers, India is one of the fastest growing markets among the top 20 global smartphone markets.
Reliance Jio began rolling out its 4G enabled feature phones, establishing a dominant position within its very first quarter in the category, resulting in a total shipment of 164 million feature phones in 2017, up from 2016’s 140 million units.
As a result, this category also featured a massive 67% year on year growth and a growth of 33% from the previous quarter.
Impact On Incumbents
Having already mentioned the changes in subscriber base, the real impact was seen on the balance sheets of the existing operators, due to resultant dire financial reasons in some cases.
The three major operators, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular were the firms that had the most margin when it came to absorbing the hit as a result of the entry of a disruptive firm like Jio, however the impact was felt to a greater extent by firms that did not have the same financial backing as that of these industry giants, to be able to engage in the possibility of a price war that now loomed as a result of the free subscriptions and services that were now being offered.
In a paper discussing the very impact of Jio on the Indian telecommunications sector, Noorul Haq stated that the larger firms were fortuitous enough to have the financial backing to be able to absord the impact, however smaller operaters were not as fortunate, and to that end, consolidations or exits from the telecom sector seemed inevitable.
Case in point, the merger of
Reliance Communications (owned by Anil Ambani) with Aircel which was approved by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) in August of 2015, but was subsequently called
off by the former due to ‘legal uncertainties and delays due to policy derivatives’, according to a statement released by Anil Ambani.
On the consumer end, this entry would not necessarily affect any market functioning in an adverse manner, at least not under the given circumstances.
Many experts postulate that this kind of aggressive expansion may not work too favorably for consumers in the long run in the off chance Jio is able to create a monopoly with relatively unrestricted pricing power in the telecommunications space.
However, in the immediate short run period, existing telecom providers might be forced to improve their quality in terms of both, infrastructure and services offered, along with the necessity providing data at lower costs that were in tandem with the prevalent prices due to the existing price war in the telecommunication space.
As far as other telecom operators are concerned, the increased necessity of being able to compete with Jio’s new tariffs resulted in increased capital expenditure as a result of upgrading their networks, along with the Attorney General signing off on the penalty imposed by the Telecom Regulatory Autory of India of Rs. 3,050 crore on Vodafone, Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular as a result of the interconnection issue with these networks and Jio connections had combined effects that resulted in unprecedented outcomes.
Jio also seemed to have incredibly ambitious goals for their next fiscal year, with one of their primary aims being raising their Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) to Rs. 300 within the next 12 months. This value is almost twice the industry standard, and would naturally be extremely hard to achieve.
Jio also hopes to both break even and become profitable by the end of the year, which seems like more of a dream than reality.
Lenders, shareholders as well as government revenue in the Telecom space had taken a large hit with reported sectorial debt being valued at approximately Rs. 3.5 lakh crore, with the aftershock of the entry of Reliance Jio being felt in the mobile handset industry as well.
The price war that was started by Jio was now in full swing with other major operators having to match similar offers.
Despite customers benefitting greatly from the drastic fall in prices, this price war resulted in a fall in revenue for major telecom operators along with a drop in profitability of the entire sector as a whole, and was set to greatly affect the financials of existing telecom companies whilst simultaneously bringing about consolidation within the industry.
Taking more recent data, the following chart depcits the market share of major players in the Indian telecom sector and how their market share has changed from the second to the third quarter of the 2018 financial year.
Chart 1:
This chart also shows how Reliance Jio has leapfrogged Idea Cellular to become the third largest telecom operator in India after just 16 months of operations.
Reliance saw its market share increase by 584 basis points from the last quarter and is now only 90 basis points away from being the second largest provider, only behind Airtel.
[The revenue from the market share is calculated by using the Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) of each firm that is provided by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, and is essentially the gross revenue of the firm that is then adjusted for interconnect usage charges along with other miscellaneous deductions.]
According to Chart 1, Bharti Airtel lost some market share, while both Vodafone and Idea saw a marginal improvement in market share.
The years following the entry of Jio in the telecom space also saw the dissolution, mergers, acquisitions or closure of other operators in the market. This volume of closure of firms was extremely unprecedented, and to that end, Jio has been largely accused of causing this due to their predatory behavior.
The aim of this paper is to try and establish how accurate these claims are.
An important metric used in this space over and above the Adjusted Gross Revenue is the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), and is self explanatory in terms of what it measures, but it can be classified as an important metric since it can be used to losely ascertain the extent to which a firm is willing to take a hit on its revenue to increase market share.
Impact On Airtel, Vodafone And Idea Cellular
The following are the effects of Jio’s disruptive behavior on Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular respectively.
Bharti Airtel
The biggest operator in the country, Airtel held 31.7% of market share, and as of the third quarter in FY2017, the company registered a decline compared to the second quarter. Its revenues from Indian operations declined by nearly 6% with group revenues declining by approximately 5%.
EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) saw a growth compared to the corresponding quarter of the previous financial year, however showed a decline in comparison to the previous quarter, with EBITDA margins also showing a similar trend.
Net profit also saw a massive decline in comparison to both the previous quarter along with the corresponding quarter of the last financial year.
Airtel has been forced to step up its CapEx during the quarter so as to compete with Jio’s highly sophisticated network, which has resulted in a decline in both Return On Equity (ROE) and Return On Investment (ROI).
Vodafone
In similar fashion to Airtel, Vodafone also reported a decline in revenue for the quarter that ended in December 2016 when compared to the corresponding quarter of the previous financial year.
This was also around the time when Group CEO, Vittorio Colao announced that the company had begun discussions with the Aditya Birla Group for a possible merger between Idea Cellular and Vodafone to better help combat the intense competition that now existed in India’s domestic market.
Reported revenue as of December 2016 had experienced a 3.9% decline compared to the corresponding quarter in the previous year for Vodafone consolidated, and by 5.5% during the same time period for Vodafone India.
Idea Cellular
Idea reported a decline in company revenue during the third quarter of FY 2017 in comparison to both the previous quarter by approximately 7% and the corresponding quarter of the previous year by 3.8%.
EBITDA figures also showed a decline of 23.7% relative to the previous quarter as well as a decline of 24.4% relative to the corresponding quarter of FY 2016.
Naturally, EBITDA margins also showed a diminishing trend, and the company incurred huge losses whereas in previous quarters, it had reported net losses.
The company was also forced to reduce voice calling as well as mobile data rates within that quarter to be able to retain existing customers.
Digitization And Increased Teledensity
With an extremely saturated voice segment in the Indian telecom market, there is scope for unprecedented levels of growth within the data segment.
Having taken this into consideration, Jio focused on the digitization of India, strategically hitting the data segment, and by the end of FY 2015, the number of 3G or 4G subscribers was approximated at nearly 173.7 million, and was expected to grow to 2
20 million by FY 2016, and projected to grow to 322 million come 2020.
With these metrics, Reliance has plans to offer
coverage to nearly 70% of the population including rural areas. Presently, Jio operates in 18,000 cities as well as 2,00,000 villages across India, with the company having the largest fiber optic network that currently exists in India, which is capable of extremely high data speeds.
Incumbents and other operators in the industry have already invested large sums in laying an extensive 2G/3G fiber network, and replacing this with a 4G network would require a great deal of funding, and therefore these firms also face major investment issues.
Along with this, Jio has the technical prowess to seamlessly upgrade to and adopt 5G on a large scale, and understanding that Indian customers are extremely price sensitive has allowed it to set up an extremely enticing price structure for its services along with the launch of its extremely reasonably priced 4G handsets.
As a result, Jio is able to target both rural populations along with more affluent sections of society, with its current focus simply being to bring as many new customers on board with their pricing.
Analysts within the telecom sector actually believe that the launch of increasingly more affordable data packages would result in increased data adoption across segments, thereby causing average data consumption to rise as well, and this may result in a net positive benefit to the operator’s profitability during the long run due to increased capacity utilization.
Leading brokerage firms in the sector labeled the free voice calling and cheap data services of Jio as extremely disruptive, expecting a great deal of pressure on incumbents, however, if the incumbents were able to survive this level of competition, Jio’s business plan cannot necessarily be considered to be disruptive, and may in fact prove to be a promising sectorial development.
In summary, the fact that there was disruption on such a large scale indicates that the fragmented sector needs a shift in the direction of a more consolidated industry, with an increased emphasis on data consumption as opposed to the current emphasis on the voice segment due to the saturated stage this segmented has now reached.
Over and above this Jio’s entry may have paved the way for improved service quality since now all major operators will be forced to invest in improved networks and infrastructure, with an en mass reduction in prices.
Impact On RIL, Jio’s Retention Rate And ARPU
After the industry wide disruption with its free services, Jio has managed to mantain pressure on other companies with extremely competitive data tariff plans from the 1st of April, 2017. Along with incredibly cheap data plans, Jio had announed that all voice calls would be completely free: roaming, STD as well as local calls, and consequently, the stock market rewarded this aggressive entry with Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) stock increasing by over 13% in the short span of a week, with their subscriber base now crossing 10 crores.
The same question lingered once more. How many of these 10 crore subscribers would Jio be able to retain after their year of free services lapsed. Most analysts granted that Jio would experience a retention rate of approximately 50%, however, some experts guessed that they might experience a higher retention rate since they offered greater amounts of data at competitive prices.
Ambani stated that if more than 50% of existing subscribers chose to stick with with Jio, and became paying customers, there would be serious repercussions on the other telecom operators. This takes into account Jio customers that may choose to retain plans from other subscribers may reduce usage of other operators, thereby greatly impacting their ARPU. It would then become increasingly difficult for operators such as Vodafone, Airtel and Idea, among others, to grow their consumer base as Jio kept aggressively increasing their base at the others’ expense.
What is interesting to note is that Reliance Jio might experience an ARPU that is indeed higher than the industry average of approximately Rs. 150.
Analyst at Edelweiss Financial Services, Jal Irani states that this could be stated by factoring an ARPU of Rs. 227 for 2018-19 under the assumption that approximately 53% of Jio’s customers would choose to subscribe to the Jio Prime plan at Rs. 303 per month while the remaining customers would subscribe to their lowest priced plan at Rs. 149 per month.
However, at the given ARPU of Rs. 227, the telecom operator would need nearly 11.1 crore customers to simply break even in 2018-19, and if competition intensifies, Jio may be forced to slash prices even further which would naturally result in a drop in its ARPU.
In the off chance that that is the case, Jio will need to increase its customer base by a much greater amount to break even. This being said, Reliance Industries Limited has experienced a decrease in pressure of capital requirement as a result of the successful launch of Jio.
As a percentage of Reliance Industries Limited’s overall capital expenditure (CapEx), Jio’s CapEx has come down drastically and is only expected to keep falling with Jio accounting for approximately 96% of RIL’s CapEx in the financial year of 2014-15 and as of 2016-17, was only 11%.
Impact On The Online Content Industry
In turn, cheaper data costs would also pave the way for increased growth potential for the online content industry, which has been seeing a correlational as well as causal uptick in the recent years in the Indian economy.
It may be vital to note that cheaper data costs not only had a domestic effect, but would affect Indian firms that now had to contend with the likes of Amazon Prime and Netflix as they made their entry into the Indian market for online content. However, home field advantage coupled with the possibility of lower price points and programming in regional languages might mean that the battle for the online content market might not be completely skewed in either direction.
Alternate Impacts On Incumbents
A fall in subscriber base is just one of the problems that faces the other operators in the Indian telecommunications space.
One of the other key factors that affects the telecom sector is a fall in pricing power.
Due to the precedent that has been set by Jio, the power that telecom operators initally had when it came to their pricing has now drastically reduced since other players in the space are now forced to match Jio’s pricing.
Conversely, if other firms do not choose to match Jio’s pricing and offers, they stand to face reduced market share and subscriber base; however, if they do slash prices, their revenues will take a hit, with the fall in net profits probably being more than the fall in revenue.
Despite these possible looming dangers, stock prices have not been adversely impacted due to the prospects of a more consolidated telecom sector in the long run since data consumption is set to increase at an exponential rate, especially over the next 3-5 years.
Investor Sentiment
Investors, however, have been warned of not being overly excited by this uptick since the there is some cautionary factors to be noted.
Airtel is one firm that would pro
ve to be a good long term investment, especially since it is expected to survive this phase of extremely cut throat pricing. Of all the operators in
the industry, Airtel has the leanest cost structure whilst simultaneously greatly improving its capital efficiency; according to to the Head of Research at ICICI Direct, Pankaj Pandey.
As a result of its acquisition of Telenor, Airtel’s market share in terms of subscribers is expected to be right around 29.1% with its revenue market share approximately 33.3%.
A paper published by Sign and Pangrikar (2013) works on the potential of 4G/LTE technology in the current telecommunication space and how a drastic overhaul in 3G technology needs to be a priority, however, if implemented properly, 4G technology holds enormous growth potential for the IT industry, a key industry in India.
Research Gap And Criticisms Of The Research Question
The way the research question is phrased, already leads the reader to possibly have a biased view, even though evidence does not prove this fact.
In the current scenario, many people believe that Jio is predatory in nature and pricing, however there is a lot of evidence that is in stark contrast to the initial hypothesis.
All data used is secondary data, and to that end, its accuracy must be verified before making use of it.
One important gap in this paper is the fact that this is only two years since Jio began rolling out on a large scale, and therefore there is not enough evidence to conclusively prove the entire list of benefits and adverse impacts that might arise as a result of their disruption.
Updating this research with more recent and relevant data after a greater length of time would better state to what extent the impacts of Reliance Jio have been felt in the Indian telecommunications space, and if there are any other unforeseen impacts that have not already been listed above.
Conclusion
Whether for good or bad, the entry of Reliance Jio has greatly affected, nearly causing a paradigm shift in the Indian telecommunications space in terms of competitive pricing, offering more plentiful services and tapping into the data segment of the market, which are just a few of the impacts felt as a result.
It will require more time to properly assess whether the entry and strategy adopted by Jio has a net positive or negative effect, and to what extent that effect would be felt in the telecommunications space in the future.
Bibliography
1. Market Disruption. (2005, March 16). Retrieved March 20, 2018, from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketdisruption.asp
2. 2017: Year of turmoil for India’s telecom sector; GST, market disruption bleed companies’ balance-sheets. (2017, December 18). Retrieved March 20, 2018, from https://www.firstpost.com/india/2017-year-of-turmoil-for-indias-telecom-sector-gst-market-disruption-bleed-companies-balance-sheets-4263835.html
3. Choudhary, V. (2016, March 30). Reliance Jio initial investment at Rs150,000 crore: Mukesh Ambani. Retrieved March 20, 2018, from https://www.livemint.com/Companies/ncT04NLRTtEMDEHAWdMPGN/Reliance-Jio-initial-investment-at-Rs150000-crore-Mukesh-A.html
4. Indian smartphone market grew 14% in 2017, shipped 124 million units, says IDC. (n.d.). Retrieved March 21, 2018, from https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/india-smartphone-market-grew-14-per-cent-in-2017-shipped-124-million-units-idc/story/270626.html
5. RCom calls off Aircel merger; blames legal uncertainties, policy directives for delay. (2017, October 02). Retrieved March 20, 2018, from https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/rcom-calls-off-aircel-merger-blames-legal-uncertainties-policy-directives-for-delay/articleshow/60901981.cms
6. Sarkar, S. (n.d.). Reliance Jio Is Now India’s Third-Largest Telecom Company. Retrieved March 20, 2018, from https://www.bloombergquint.com/markets/2018/02/23/reliance-jio-is-now-indias-third-largest-telecom-company
7. Recent developments that disrupted Indian telecom space. (n.d.). Retrieved March 19, 2018, from https://www.businesstoday.in/opinion/columns/recent-developments-that-disrupted-indian-telecom-space/story/248127.html
8. Recent developments that disrupted Indian telecom space. (n.d.). Retrieved March 19, 2018, from https://www.businesstoday.in/opinion/columns/recent-developments-that-disrupted-indian-telecom-space/story/248127.html
9. Recent developments that disrupted Indian telecom space. (n.d.). Retrieved March 19, 2018, from https://www.businesstoday.in/opinion/columns/recent-developments-that-disrupted-indian-telecom-space/story/248127.html
10. 2017: Year of turmoil for India’s telecom sector; GST, market disruption bleed companies’ balance-sheets. (2017, December 18). Retrieved March 21, 2018, from https://www.firstpost.com/india/2017-year-of-turmoil-for-indias-telecom-sector-gst-market-disruption-bleed-companies-balance-sheets-4263835.html
11. Philipose, M., & Pengonda, P. (2017, October 13). What’s behind Reliance Jio’s surprise Arpu, revenue and profit? Retrieved March 20, 2018, from https://www.livemint.com/Money/0KU3UEZH9fbbEgyChG62eL/Whats-behind-Reliance-Jios-surprise-Arpu-revenue-and-prof.html
12. Reliance Jio posted a loss of Rs 271 crore in Q2FY18; ARPU at Rs 156 per month. (2017, October 16). Retrieved March 20, 2018, from https://www.medianama.com/2017/10/223-reliance-jio-q2fy18-results/
13. ough 2018 for telcos as Reliance Jio price cut to delay Arpu recovery. (2018, January 09). Retrieved March 21, 2018, from https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/company/corporate-trends/tough-2018-for-telcos-as-reliance-jio-price-cut-to-delay-arpu-recovery/articleshow/62432890.cms
14. Reliance Jio reports Rs 504 crore profit in Q3, ARPU at Rs 154 – ET Telecom. (2018, January 19). Retrieved March 19, 2018, from https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/reliance-jio-reports-rs-504-crore-profit-in-q3/62571218
15. Reliance Jio may soon surpass Idea, Vodafone revenue market share. (2018, January 23). Retrieved March 18, 2018, from https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/reliance-jio-likely-to-surpass-idea-vodafone-revenue-market-share-individually-shortly-analysts/articleshow/62621420.cms
16. Anzar, K. (2017, June 20). Reliance Jio is still a second option for 82% telecom users. Retrieved March 20, 2018, from http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/reliance-jio-is-still-a-second-option-for-82-telecom-users-117062000389_1.html
17. Reliance Jio ate into market share of large telecoms in 2016: Trai report. (2017, July 04). Retrieved March 21, 2018, from https://www.firstpost.com/business/reliance-jio-ate-into-market-share-of-large-telecoms-in-2016-trai-report-3774919.html
18. Http://ljournal.ru/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/a-2017-023.pdf. (2017). doi:10.18411/a-2017-023
19. Tsai, C. (2001). Integrated Air Revitalization System Performance Analysis for the ISS Assembly Missions #2A.2b and #3A. SAE Technical Paper Series. doi:10.4271/2001-01-2253
20. Km, M. N., Nazreena, M., & Sunny, M. S. (2017). Http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jnhs/papers/vol6-issue1/Version-8/L0601088187.pdf. IOSR Journal of Nursing and Health Science,06(01), 88-90. doi:10.9790/1959-0601088890