Has Reliance Jio 4G speed buckled due to 16,000TB data consumption per day?

Reliance Jio has more than 16 million users on its network in less than a month, making it the fastest growing carrier.

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When something is offered for free, people make the best use of it. An ideal example of that is Reliance Jio's free Welcome Offer, which has garnered millions of users for the new telco in a short span of one month. Now, a new analysis by financial services company Credit Suisse has declared RJIL as the world's largest data carrier, putting behind China Mobile and Vodafone Global.

As per the statistics, Jio's 4G-only network is witnessing 16,000TB data consumption on a daily basis, which supersedes China Mobile's 12,000TB/day and Vodafone Global's 6,000TB per day limits, Business Today reported. Reliance Jio recently claimed it achieved a world record by adding over 16 million users to its network in a month.

Could this be the reason for Jio's speed drop? It is possible. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) labeled Jio's 4G speed the slowest at 6.2Mbps. According to the authority, Airtel has the best mobile internet speed at 11.4Mbps, while Reliance, Idea and Vodafone follow the lead with 7.9Mbps, 7.6Mbps and 7.3Mbps, respectively.

Read: Reliance Jio 4G speed review

Reliance Jio isn't the one to take any flak coolly, so it responded with an explanation as to why users are complaining of the slow speed. Jio Welcome Offer has an FUP limit of 4GB per day, and the company claims that users test the speed only after they experience a deterioration of speed. Jio said that once the FUP limit is crossed, the speeds are automatically throttled to 256kbps until the next refill happens on a new day.

Reliance Jio started testing its 4G network earlier this year with nearly 2 million users. But last month, the company rolled out its free internet services to all 4G smartphone users in India, which created a chaos in the telecom industry. According to Jio, up to 1.1 million subscribers are joining its network each day.

Reliance Jio is targeting 100 million users by March 2018. But if it is still dogged by speed issues, and not to mention the call failures to other networks, it may be a slower process than expected.