Reliance Jio Infocomm, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) had launched 4G services for its employees in December last year. It is yet to begin commercial roll out of its service. RIL’s Chairman Mukesh Ambani in the annual report for 2015-16 said that Jio now has over 15 lakh trial users and their feedback is extremely encouraging.
He said that trial will be progressively upgraded into commercial operations in the coming months, but he did not give an exact launch date, which is expected to be October.
Jio will have half-a-million activation outlets and close to a million recharge outlets at launch.
Jio is present in all of the 29 states of India with a direct physical presence in more than 18,000 urban and rural towns and over 1,50,000 villages. At launch, Jio will have 70% coverage of population and will rise to 90% in the next one year.
Reliance Jio acquired spectrum in the 800 MHz band across 13 circles and also has spectrum in the 1800 MHz band across 18 circles. It entered into an agreement for sharing of spectrum in the 800 MHz band across 21 circles (4 circles are still awaiting approval). Reliance Jio is the only telecom service provider using sub-GHz spectrum band for LTE services in the country today. The combined spectrum footprint across frequency bands provides significant network capacity and promises deep in-building coverage.
Regarding the roll out of Jio, Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of the Reliance Industries, said:
During the year, Reliance Jio moved towards completion of its network infrastructure as well as business services and platforms. We on-boarded over 1.5 million test users, who have been using the services extensively. This has enabled testing of the network, user applications and services and business platforms. The feedback from test users is extremely encouraging. The test programme will be progressively upgraded into commercial operations in the coming months.