Can a $12 phone get 300m illiterate Indians online?

WHEN MUKESH Ambani, India’s richest man, launched a mobile network in 2016, he offered subscribers free data for the first few months. Tens of millions flocked to the network, named Jio, sparking a fierce price war and expanding India’s online population. But keeping those customers once the offer lapsed required a different strategy. Mr Ambani realised that people want to keep in touch with friends and family and be entertained. So Jio phones came bundled with services such as social networks and chat apps as well as music, film and sport streaming. The plan worked: Jio is today India’s dominant network, with more than half the country’s 825m mobile-data subscribers. Indians’ data consumption has exploded.

Yet there are another 322m—about the population of America—voice-only mobile subscribers, most of whom use other networks. The persistence of this multitude is worrying for the government, which is pushing “digital India” as a way to improve access to public services and boost economic growth. It also represents a business opportunity for Jio, whose share of the overall mobile subscriber base of 1.15bn is an improvable 38%. The company boasts that it will free India from the tyranny of 2G, as the old generation of voice-only networks is known.