Telecom’s moment of truth is slowly, but surely coming As long as Reliance Jio charges around Rs133 a month, a large number of customers may still afford the luxury of having two SIMs; but clearly, this isn’t going to last forever Earlier, Reliance Jio and large incumbents Airtel and Vodafone shared a somewhat peaceful coexistence in 4G handsets. Evidently, Reliance Jio’s decision to start charging for its services has disturbed the peace Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd is beginning to have a larger impact on the active subscriber base of large incumbents. Vodafone India Ltd and Idea Cellular Ltd together lost 1.5 million active subscribers in July, data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) last week shows. Things have been wobbly for the two companies lately, with weak net additions of 0.1 million and -0.5 million in the preceding two months as well. This is in stark contrast to the first eight months of Jio’s existence, when the median increase in their subscrib...