The much awaited broadband services from Mukesh Ambani backed Reliance Jio will be launched in December this year, five years after it first bought spectrum. The company is planning to offer a slew of services including streaming music, high-definition video streaming and digital money payments.
Outlining the roadmap, Mukesh Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Industries, said that trials are being conducted and a beta version of the service will be rolled out over the next few months before a full fledged commercial launch in December.
He said that the company has been working with device makers to bring 4G enabled smartphones and tablets at less than $100.
The entire bouquet of Reliance Jio services would be priced between Rs 300 and Rs 500, he said.
"Reliance Jio is one of the largest transformational greenfield initiatives any where in the world... All key components of Jio are operational," Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani told shareholders at the company's annual general meeting here today.
Ambani said that Jio will not just be about telecom services but a complete portfolio of products and services in the digital area. It has also tied up with SBI for a payments bank licence which will be integrated with Jio Money, the digital payments services. He said that Jio's network is ready in 29 circles with coverage across 18,000 cities.
"Jio is well positioned to emerge as a global tier-I company," he added.
It has ambitions to cover 100 per cent national coverage over the enxt 3 years. Jio had launched its chat application earlier this year which already has 1 million users. Reliance has applied for cable Tv licence which will also be integrated with Jio's video streaming strategy
Ambani said that Reliance Jio will also play a major role in the areas like smart cities, internet of things and online healthcare.
Jio's entry is being widely anticipated by the industry and the users for disruptive services.
"In rural areas, we are prioritising connectivity to thousands of schools. This is to ensure that the benefit of our broadband initiative is first and foremost felt by students who stand to gain the most by accessing the Information highway. Jio has also deployed a network of nearly 250,000 route km of fibre optics, thereby creating a future-proof digital backbone across India. Over the next 3 years, Jio will more than double this fibre footprint by deploying fibre optics in the last mile," Ambani said.
By April of next year, Jio would have connected over 1 million homes via fibre with a capability of rapidly scaling up in the top 50 cities of India. Jio has operationalised nearly half a million square feet of its own next-generation cloud data centres. Work is underway to double this capacity over the next year.
The Jio team has grown rapidly over the past year to over 17,500 full-time employees.
"All the key components of the Jio broadband network are now operational. As we speak, we have an end-to-end initial capacity to serve in excess of 100 million wireless broadband and 20 million fibre-to-the-home customers, with capability to easily expand further as the business scales up. I am glad to announce that financial year 2016-17 will be the first full year of commercial operations for Jio," Ambani said.
He said that Jio will play a significant role in lifting India from its current 142nd rank on Internet penetration to amongst the top 10 nations in the world.
JIO SERVICES
Switch-and-Walk – an application that allows customers to seamlessly copy everything from their old phone to a new phone. All your contacts, messages, photos, music, media and applications – from one phone to another, wirelessly, with just a few easy clicks.
'Jio Drive' – an application that brings powerful cloud capabilities to every smartphone. Using Jio Drive, anyone can store, sync, and share any content between their own devices and also with their friends.
Jio Play – With this, one will be able to watch HD TV anytime, anywhere, on any device. It has hundreds of channels, across categories and languages.
'Jio Beats' – a premier digital music streaming service that gives you instant access to millions of songs and curated playlists – from old favourites to the latest hits. One can also download music and listen to it offline.
'Jio Mags' provides the most popular collection of magazines, in full colour and with a slew of innovative features. One can read past issues along with the very latest issues. Imagine enjoying your favourite magazine on your mobile and tablet with embedded videos.
'Jio News' – delivers a one-stop-shop for all news from leading news publishing houses across multiple languages and categories. It offers instant live updates with zero loading time and offline reading capability.
Jio Money – Digital payments and money transfer services