Jio vs Airtel: Telcos fight shifts to 500 mn feature phone customers

Battleground shifts to rural and small towns, where user base aspires to upgrade to smartphones

After slugging it out in metros and big cities, the fight for customers among operators has now shifted to rural and small towns as telecoms target to get a pie of the 500 million strong customer base, which currently uses feature phones but aspires to own a smartphone.
 
Reliance Jio was the first one to tap the feature phone customer base with the launch of Rs 1,500 4G-enabled feature phone in July this year. The Mukesh Ambani-owned company, which had already rattled the incumbent operators with its free and cheap offerings, led to the shift towards this segment of