Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (RJIL) has paid Rs 1,673 crore to the Government as entry fee to migrate to unified licence.
The company, which until now had an Internet service licence, will be able to offer both voice and data services at launch.
The company has also acquired a licence in Singapore that will allow it to buy, operate and sell undersea and terrestrial fibre connectivity, set up its Internet point of presence, offer Internet transit and peering services as well as data and voice roaming services in that country.
Reliance Jio had earlier received the letter of intent for the unified licence. According to an internal Government note seen by
Reliance Jio is the only private player with broadband spectrum in all the 22 telecom circles of India. The payment of entry fee puts the company closer to the launch, expected early next year. The company plans to provide high speed Internet connectivity and digital services on a pan-India basis.
Key domains
In addition to fixed and wireless broadband connectivity, the Mukesh Ambani-backed venture also plans to enable solutions across various digital services in key domains such as education, healthcare, security and financial services.
The company has put in place a team of 4,000 employees as it prepares for the launch. “Reliance Jio has finalised the key vendor and supplier partnerships that are required for the launch of our services, and is making rapid progress in building the critical infrastructure needed to launch its services,” said a company statement. In the past year, Reliance Jio had announced definitive agreements with Reliance Communications (RCom) for inter-city optical fibre sharing, for sharing of up to 45,000 of RCom’s nationwide telecom towers, and for joint working arrangements to configure the scope of additional towers to be built at new locations.
Reliance Jio also announced a key agreement for international data connectivity with Bharti to utilise dedicated fibre pair on Bharti’s i2i submarine cable that connects India and Singapore.
Key challenge
But the key challenge for the company is to use 2.3 GHz spectrum band for offering mobile broadband services. According to industry experts, it is extremely costly to deploy pan-Indian network using this frequency band due to its poor propagation characteristics.
One of the options for the company is to buy additional spectrum in the 900 MHz band, which is expected to be auctioned this year. However, incumbent players such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone are also expected to bid for this spectrum band.