TIL Desk/Business/New Delhi/ Reliance Jio on Friday said telecom tariffs in the country cannot be raised as there are a large number of people who still use feature phones and companies need to innovate around data to perform. “There are still around 400 million Indians who use feature phone and hence tariff can’t be raised to reach out to them,” Reliance Jio president Mathew Oommen said at the India Mobile Congress. He said companies need to focus on innovation or they will be displaced.
“As a service provider, we need to know are we going to make GB (gigabyte) cost a little bit lower and make money or little bit higher and make money — that is not the mechanism. We have to innovate or we will get displaced,” Oommen said. He cited the example of US and Chinese internet giants who have grown rich on the basis of data.
“We live in gigabyte economy and not product economy. We as service providers are the enablers for any digital transformation. “That digital transformation is enabled by ultra broadband. We need to be invested in data science, artificial and machine learning — that is going to enable us transform quickly,” Oommen said.
