 "Reliance Jio, Mukesh Ambani, Shah Rukh Khan, 4G")
Reliance Jio Infocomm is planning to launch commercial fourth-generation technology (4G) services in the next six to eight weeks.
Jio, telecom arm of the Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), had earlier commenced a preview offer of the service and now has about 1.5 million test-users on its network. The average monthly consumption per user is in excess of 26 GB and increasing. Average monthly voice usage is 355 minutes.
“We are moving towards complete readiness for the launch of Jio," said Anshuman Thakur, head of strategy and planning. “We have spent Rs 1.34 lakh crore towards capital expenditure for Jio, of the committed capex of Rs 1.5 lakh crore.”
The launch is likely to lead to a rate war among operators, with those for data services set to fall further. Jio holds a pan-India unified licence and has liberalised spectrum holdings of 846.10 megahertz (MHz) — 440 MHz in the 2,300 MHz band, 213.6 MHz in the 1,800 MHz band and 192.50 MHz in the 800 MHz band. And, it has an agreement with Reliance Communications (the Anil Ambani group) for sharing of spectrum in the 800 MHz band across 21 of the country's 22 telecom circles. It’s been six years since the company bought pan-India 4G spectrum in the 2010 auction.
Jio is rolling out a pan-India digital services business and in addition to fixed and wireless broadband connectivity, offering voice and data services on an all-IP network, it will also offer digital services in domains such as education, health care, security, communication, financial services, government-citizen interfaces and entertainment.
The company has sold about two million LYF devices (LYF, part of RIL and also known as Reliance LYF, is a mobile handset company, making 4G-enabled smartphones) so far and has reduced the price of its Flame series to Rs 2,999 each.
During the quarter, Jio extended its trial services to all LYF device users, under a preview offer. This has enabled testing of all the services to customers outside the initial set of test users. The feedback has been very encouraging, says the company.
