It came as a surprise to all stakeholders - competing telecom companies (telcos), most analysts and even the government's internal projections on revenues from the 5G auctions. Reliance Jio disrupted all calculations by paying a stiff Rs 40,000 crore to buy 10 MHz of spectrum in the 700-MHz band, globally considered a key band for efficient 5G service coverage, along with the default 3.5 GHz band and the ultra-high speed and low-latency millimetre band of 26 GHz band. So what made Jio pay almost 45 per cent of its total spend in this auction for the 700 MHz band - much more than what it rustled up even for the 3.5 GHz band?
Trai had asked the Attorney General for views on Jio's free voice and data offering till March 2017, that rivals have termed predatory.
Abhik Sen, who tried out the new service, finds out it is good for data and apps, but calls are still sketchy
The Reliance Industries' digital services company Jio Platforms Limited has signed an agreement with SpaceX to offer Starlink's broadband internet services to its customers in India, the company said on Wednesday. The agreement is subject to SpaceX receiving authorisation to sell Starlink in India. The development came a day after Jio's rival Bharti Airtel signed a similar pact with SpaceX.
The ministry of consumer affairs had sent notices to both the companies under the Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act of 1950, which bars use of prime minister's name and picture for commercial use.
On Monday, Ambani had said the Reliance group was open to join hands with Bharti Airtel for improving telecom network for 4G services in Punjab.
With 90% of the inventories sold out, JioStar expects to ring in more than a 58% increase over last year's IPL, when it clocked Rs 3,900 crore.
Reliance Jio's aggressive target to reach 100 million households through the launch of the 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) could make it one of the world's largest players in this space. But this also marks a change from its earlier strategy of offering fibre-to-the home (FTTH) broadband to households. Despite its best efforts, in two years Jio has been able to connect only 7 million households with FTTH, as permission for right of way for the last mile became a major impediment and the process of laying ducts for the roll-out was slow and cumbersome.
The much-awaited soft launch of Reliance Jio's next-generation mobile services has been delayed by another month.
Company now plans to use 1800 MHz band spectrum as the primary wave while the 2300 Mhz wave will be supplementary for enterprise customers.
Jio is now present in all of the 29 states.
Total wireless subscribers increased from 1.1 billion, in January to 1.2 billion in February, thereby registering a monthly growth rate of 0.72 per cent.
New customer additions by Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel pushed the Indian telecom subscriber base past 120.5 crore in June, according to a Trai report released on Tuesday. The wireless subscriber base grew marginally to over 117 crore and wireline connections in the country increased to 3.51 crore in June from 116.89 crore and 3.47 crore, respectively, in May, as per data released in Trai's subscriber report for June.
Shares of Reliance Industries as well as Bharti Airtel began the trade on a positive note on Wednesday after the two firms announced their partnerships with Elon Musk's SpaceX for providing high-speed internet services in India. Bharti Airtel stock opened with a gain of 5.49 pc to hit a high of Rs 1,388.25 apiece on the National Stock Exchange (NSE). Soon, it pared all gains and traded 0.77 per cent lower to Rs 1,650.10 per piece.
A war of words between Reliance Industries' Gautam Chikermane and hacker group Anonymous India broke out on Twitter.
Bharti Airtel is expected to see its highest revenue growth, and subscriber addition during the third quarter (October-December) of FY25 among telcos, said analysts. The telco's top line in Q3 may see the fastest sequential growth at 5 per cent compared to 3 per cent for Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea (Vi). Airtel's annual mobile revenue growth would rise to 16 per cent, IIFL Capital said in an analyst note.
Reliance Jio has urged telecom regulator Trai to come up with a revised paper on spectrum allocation for satellite communication alleging that it ignores the key point of ensuring level-playing field between satellite and terrestrial services. In a letter to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) chairman, Anil Kumar Lahoti, Reliance Jio has sought revision of the consultation paper on recommending rules for "terms and conditions for the assignment of spectrum for certain satellite-based commercial communication services".
Deals between the two could earn RCom Rs 14,000 cr, says Anil Ambani.
In the third infrastructure sharing agreement between firms run by brothers Mukesh and Anil Ambani, Reliance Industries' telecom arm has agreed to use Reliance Communication Ltd's intra-city fibre network to roll out 4G services.
Reliance Jio bought spectrum in the 1800 MHz band last February.
Surajeet Das Gupta explains why Mukesh Ambani's target is by no means impossible.
Airtel Xstream will allow its subscribers to access live TV, video, music, news and sports on an over-the-top smart stick, interned-enabled set top box, and handheld devices.
At Rs 2,999, LYF Flame is one of the most affordable VoLTE smartphone in the market now.
Reliance is leveraging the technological change of building a virtualised 5G network which would see the current hardware-dependent networks shift to software-centric platforms.
Reliance Jio's decision to acquire 700 MHz in combination with the possible use of an advanced standalone (SA) 5G network could give it an edge over its rivals, according to most analysts. The dissenters argue that the stiff price tag touching Rs 40,000 crore to grab 10 MHz of spectrum in 700 to provide coverage for its SA 5G network which offers ultra-low latency (unlike non-standalone or NSA), has a long way to go in India in terms of finding use cases that can be monetised. Globally, 700 MHz is a pivotal band which provides huge coverage, indoor penetration (especially useful in India where walls are thick) and is already considered by the European Union to be the 'pioneer band' for 5G, with 3.5 GHz and 26 GHz, both of which were auctioned in India recently.
Once launched, RJio services will cover over 18,000 towns and over 200,000 villages across all the 22 service areas of the country
'There is no doubt at all that Jio's disruption of the mobile broadband market was a turning point for India's digital economy.'
Dubai-based siblings Jainam and Jivika, the owners of jiohotstar.com domain, have decided to transfer it to Reliance "free of cost", resting speculations on social media platforms. The story of the internet domain name, which grabbed a lot of attention on social media platforms in the recent past, ended with "seva and kindness", according to the duo.
In what could be one of the largest launches in the telecom services space, Reliance Jio Infocomm is set to roll out its 4G LTE services in 800 Indian cities between April and June next year.
With the latest spectrum acquisition, the telecom venture would be the holder of the largest quantum of liberalised spectrum.
Gearing up for its pan-India 4G services launch in coming months, Reliance Jio Infocomm has approached the Department of Telecom for a network test conducted along with security agencies.
Data traffic generated by such tests is rivaling combined traffic other operators present for 15-20 years
Reliance Jio Infocomm has moved the Bombay High Court seeking approval for amalgamating its long distance services arm Infotel with itself.
Continuing to push back against the stringent quality of service (QoS) norms brought in by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), telcos have informed the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) that collection and submission of monthly and site-to-cell-level data should be eased, officials and industry sources said. In place since October last year, the QoS norms call for data for network availability, call drop, voice packet drop rate in uplink and downlink, among other parameters, to be collected at the cell level.
Reliance Jio may not ask for a premium for its 5G services in the initial stages of the launch, according to sources in the company. The company will roll out 5G commercial services in four cities -Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata - around Diwali this month and slowly ramp up the processes for other cities, too. A senior executive, when asked whether Jio will charge higher tariffs for 5G against 4G, said: "In the initial stages, customers have to adopt 5G, then they will have to find value in the service, and then one can look at monetisation."
Tech billionaire Elon Musk thanked Telecom Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia for not agreeing with Indian tycoons Mukesh Ambani and Sunil Bharti Mittal on auctioning spectrum for satellite services, saying he is looking forward to serving Indians. Reacting to Scindia's statement that satellite spectrum will not be auctioned, Musk, in a post on X, said, "much appreciated! We will do our best to serve the people of India with Starlink".
Jio is targeting to differentiate its services via superior data and an associated ecosystem of content.
The Unified Licence for all 22 Service Areas across India will make the company the first telecom operator in the country to get pan India Unified Licence, the company said in a statement.
Global rating agency Fitch on Tuesday said the imminent entry of Reliance Jio into the telecom space will see a likely 20 per cent fall in data tariffs, but will not have any impact on the credit profile of the top four incumbents in the medium term as their revenue is on an uptick on rising voice tariffs and improving regulatory environment.
Jio, which launched its services in September, had no revenue from operations during October 2016 to March 2017
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