Reliance Jio Infocomm to launch 4G services later this year: Ambani

NEW DELHI: Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani said that Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (RJIL) would be ready to commercially launch its much talked about the fourth generation (4G) telecom services in second half of 2016, offering 80 per cent of Indians high-speed mobile internet, as well as voice services.

Two months ago, Ambani-led RJIL had launhced a 4G service for its employees, The launch was held at Reliance Corporate Park in Mumbai, while RIL other employees were virtually connected at around 1000 locations including Dallas in the US.

“We'll be ready to launch in the second half of 2016. Eighty per cent of India’s population will have high-speed, mobile broadband internet. So, 80 per cent of the 1.3 billion Indians will have high-speed, mobile internet. And 2017, we would cover 90 per cent. By 2018, all of India would be covered by this digital infrastructure,” he told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in an interview.

Telecom arm of RIL, RJIL's 4G services are currently available to roughly 120,000 employees, their families and business partners.

The company has invested close to USD 15 billion in the telecom venture so far. RJIL is the first telecom operator to hold pan India Unified License. It holds the highest amount of liberalised spectrum among telecom operators totaling to 751.1MHz across the 800MHz, 1800MHz and 2300MHz bands.

About Reliance's massive investment

Ambani said he believed that humanity is at the doorstep of massive change, and "we're just at the beginning of the information and the digital age, he said.

"And in the next 20 years, in a network society, we are going to have change much more than what we have seen in the last hundred years," Ambani said.

Ambani said digitisation will be at the forefront of the digital revolution and India cannot be left behind.

"As we saw in the year 2012-13, India is 150th in the world in mobile broadband penetration as well as quality. And Jio has really been conceived to change this position," he said.

Citing the example of US, where 4G services were launched five years ago, he said major carriers today cover only 75 to 80 per cent of the market. "And we would be pretty much doing that in 2016 itself," he said.

He further added "Digital infrastructure is a very good investment,"

"For me personally, we made this investment just to make sure that the youth of India, which is still the bulk of India -- India, as you know, is a very young country -- is empowered, and they have an equal opportunity to not only prosper themselves, but to contribute to this new world.

"And that was really a main reason. And that's why we took very high risks," he said.

The investment with time "now looks like being pretty good even business-wise," he added.

Under the business strategy, RJIL has already launched instant messaging application Jio Chat and will launch apps in education and healthcare sectors.

For seamless connectivity, Jio had also partnered with Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communication to share the latter’s 1, 20,000 km optic fibre network across the country.

On June 12,2015, Ambani had unveiled details of Jio’s fourth-generation (4G) services at the 41st annual general meeting of parent RIL .

“The company will offer data and voice services at half or less than half the current rates. The offerings will include instant messaging, live TV, movies on demand, news, streaming music and a digital payments platform,” the RIL chairman had said.

“I am confident that Jio will play a significant role in lifting India from its current 142nd rank on Internet penetration to among the top 10 nations in the world,” Ambani had said.

Recently, the company has joined with eight global telecom service providers– MTS, BT, Deutsche Telekom, Millicom, Orange, Rogers, TeliaSonera and TIM– to build a new partnering operator alliance that will allow partner businesses to more efficiently and quickly bring innovative products and services to customers around the world.

Under the agreement, these companies have potential customer base of around 1 billion customers in more than 80 countries can be reached.