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Infotel Broadband Services (Infotel), a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, is planning to launch broadband services by 2013. The company is getting its act together and the focus is on recruiting people, finalizing vendors for network and devices, and developing applications. It is expected that Reliance Industries will finalize its partner ecosystem on or before Q1 2013. Apart from this, the company is making sure that broadband services, whenever they are launched, are truly broadband in nature and quality of service is upto the mark so that there is no disappointment for consumers.
The company is also looking at Google Fiber Project (a pilot project to boost Internet speed) which was recently launched in Kansas City in the US on July 26, 2012. For Kansas City, Google is providing high speed Internet and TV services at $120 per month. Within a week, the company has signed 7,000 homes in Missouri and Kansas and the consumer is presently availing 1 GBPS Internet bandwidth (100 times faster than most Internet subscriptions in the US), 2 TB of DVR storage, 1 TB of Google Drive, and free Google Nexus 7 Tablet. Using this service, the consumer can do high speed Internet, view television channels and avail on demand services on her or his tablet, which was unheard of till date. The service presently does not allow making voice calls but at such high speeds one can do lot of innovations, be it in the field of education, healthcare or other services. All this will open up new kind of services and applications never heard of before.
It seems Reliance Industries is planning to replicate the Google Fiber model in India with a bit of localization. The company is also looking at providing voice calls on the IP backbone as and when they are allowed by policy makers. The NTP 2012 also talks about encouraging an ecosystem for provision of a significantly large bouquet of services on IP platform. So, addition of voice can act as a killer app for Indian consumers. Apart from this the company is also looking at M2M (machine to machine) applications, video confercing solutions and home security solutions but the main focus is on pricing, quality and bundling, as these will determine the popularity of Infotel services in the country.
To make broadband ready network, the company has started laying ducts in Delhi, Mumbai and other cities; the contract has been given to HFCL. On the network front, Infotel has given the contract to Samsung to deploy LTE base stations, including all associated systems and network support services. The deal includes Radio Access Network (RAN) and LTE core infrastructure solutions to be deployed by RIL. Plans are to deploy a Smart LTE solution, ie, 3,000 eNodeB in Jamnagar and Mumbai. In the first phase, plans are for shipping 100 eNodeBs by December, 2012. Focus is also on creating metro area network and connecting fiber to residential complexes using FTTH and GPON technology. On the OSS/BSS front, the company has tied up with a lot of vendors for different modules. The company has also taken around 100 people from IBM for doing integration of OSS/BSS modules.
It seems the company is finally gearing towards launching a true broadband service initially in Delhi and Mumbai, which contributes a sizable portion of India's broadband subscriber base. Once the company is successful in these two cities, it plans to launch broadband services in state capitals and other cities in a phase wise launch. So,Infotel Broadband Services is taking a lot of time to see to it that they are successful in Delhi and Mumbai which will pave its success in other cities.
Pravin Prashant
pravinp@cybermedia.co.in