Reliance unveils fixed line fibre broadband service in 1,100 cities
Mumbai: After shaking mobile telephony with free voice calls and dirt cheap data, richest Indian Mukesh Ambani on Thursday unveiled an ultra high-speed fixed line fibre broadband for homes and enterprises across 1,100 cities and announced plans for an e-commerce platform that may rival likes of Amazon.
The new offerings alongside the strengthening of the mainstay energy and petrochemicals business will help double size of oil-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries to $125 billion by 2025, he told the company's shareholders.
Ambani said customers can start registering for the fixed line broadband from August 15 but did not give a launch date of the service, which will through one fibre provide high-speed internet, ultra high definition entertainment on large screen TVs, multi-party video conferencing, voice-activated virtual assistance, virtual reality gaming and digital shopping as well as smart home solutions.
Jio GigaFiber will offer ultimate broadband experience to surf, stream, game, and work, because of its ultra-fast upload and download speeds and effective functioning in milliseconds.
It will come directly to homes unlike in most cases where the fibre reaches only until the building and the last few meters of end connectivity is done using the traditional cable, which drastically reduces the speed and user experience due to patches and inferior cable qualities of such patch up.
Jio, Reliance's telecom service firm, will move India to top five nations in fixed-line broadband in the coming year, Ambani said but did not give pricing of the new offering or its launch date.
"We are currently running beta trials in tens of thousands of homes," he said. "While India has pole-vaulted into global leadership in the mobile broadband space... we still lag behind significantly in fixed-line broadband. India is ranked quite low at 134th in the global ranking for fixed broadband. Poor fixed-line infrastructure has been a key reason for this," he said.
With over Rs 2,50,000 crore already invested in digital infrastructure for providing mobile and broadband connectivity across the country, fibre broadband connectivity will now reach homes.
Jio's launch in September 2016 has already made India the highest mobile data consuming nation.
He also announced second-generation JioPhone with added features like qwerty keypad and messaging services like Whatsapp, Facebook, and Youtube. The phone will be available for booking from August 15 for Rs 2,999.
