Reliance Jio sees fall in data consumption. Porn ban to be blamed?

Telecom player Reliance Jio saw a decline in its average data consumption per user, per month in December. The company saw its average consumption fall to 10.8 GB in the quarter ending December from 11 GB in the quarter ending September.

This fall might be attributed to the government ban on pornography sites. According to media reports, Anshuman Thakur, Head of Strategy and Planning at Reliance Jio said that one could possibly speculate that, saying,

“It’s a marginal dip. We are looking at various ways to drive our data consumption. Jio phone users data consumption is almost at par with any smartphone user.”

In the September quarter results, parent company Reliance Industries revealed that an average user spent 17.5 hours watching videos online, every month.

YourStory earlier reported, PornHub's India traffic from mobile was at 86 percent in 2017, of which up to 80 percent were from tier-II and tier-III cities. This could be because of the cheap data made available by Reliance Jio.

Following the alleged rape of a minor in a boarding school in Dehradun, the Indian Government directed Internet service providers to ban hundreds of pornographic sites or risk losing their license in a judgement.

The Uttarakhand High Court mandated the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to issue a ban on 827 adult content websites, in late September. Reliance Jio was the first internet service provider to follow this order and ban porn sites since October. Airtel, Idea and BSNL followed suit, resulting in mass outrage on social media.

On the contrary, Reliace Jio added 27.9 million users between October and December. As video continued to drive its data consumption, the telecom company's customer base went up to 280.1 million. On a per-user basis, average monthly data consumption was 10.8 GB, and video consumption increased to 460 crore hours per month and drove most of the usage.