If sim retaintion charge is ₹100. At first millions of Jio customers will disappear who created multiple sims during freebie period and are inactive now. On top of that porting situation will become unpredictable. People who have registered their number on Aadhar, Gas Bill etc on old non Jio numbers. Whether they will stay with Airtel, Vodafone Idea, BSNL or port to Jio will be interesting to look out for.
Jio Sims without recharge for more than a year should be deactivated immediately, available mobile numbers would increase and we will be able to see real figures of Jio's subscriber base.
As per TRAI data, Jio VLR was 82% and other were 98%. So, many Jio sims will be inactive. Floor Price can do some relief to incumbents and dual sim holding will disappear.
If numbers are deactivated. They will give numbers to new users causing more inconvenience. TRAI needs to stop recycling of old numbers.
Also, the current mobile numbering scheme (especially numbers starting with 6 and 7) are taken from the available gaps in the existing STD codes. Picture from Wikipedia. So the current scheme is inefficient.
I think most users from rural and semi-urban can prefer Jio for their voice clarity (VOLTE) and 4G data. So, next target for incumbents will be building of 4G volte for rural and some semi-urban areas with sub Ghz band.
I haven't used Vodafone's VOLTE yet. But Airtel's VOLTE is fine now. Only IVR options of its own customer service doesn't work. Plus I like having options like 2G atleast until next 2 years. It's convenient for now during commuting through trains. And in the urban areas network with better internet speeds will dominate. That's why Vodafone is doing great in West Bengal and Assam.
