Reliance Jio which is officially known as Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited, the provider of broad band and digital services. It was formerly known as Infotel Broadband Services Limited. It is one of the providers of 4G services. The 4G services by Reliance Jio were started in December 2015 but it was first launched only for its employees. Soon it will be launched commercially in second half of 2016. It was the most awaited player into India’s competitive telecom segment. Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan, brand ambassador of Bharti Airtel, is the brand ambassador of Reliance Jio.
Reliance Jio believes to lead the world with its enhanced capacities and innovations. It aims to enable transformations not by just enhanced capacities but also by but also by creating a powerful eco system on which a range of rich digital services will be enabled, a unique green field opportunity. The vision of Reliance Jio for India is that digital services should not be the luxury item. It should be affordable by every citizen of India. The initiative taken by them is aligned with the vision of our nations ‘Digital India’. The areas where Jio has focused are:
Jio has come up with something new that will provide people affordable and secure digital payments. They want people to use digital currency instead of paper currency. Jio’s money, Jio’s currency, Jio’s digital payments will help in achieving this. They also want that more and more education should be spread among children so to lift the level of education they introduced digital education. Digital Healthcare will be provided through Jio with an expert advice anytime and anywhere. This will improve the quality of life in India. It is not limited to only education and entertainment but is also building a powerful platform on which digital products and services can be enabled – digital healthcare, digital education, digital currency, e-governance. There are two things that are expected from Reliance Jio. One is the affordability and another is the unlike voice. It is trying to create a new challenge for everybody as they are trying to enhance capacities and if today a consumer consumes 700-800 mega bytes than definitely now he would want it to be 10-12 gigabytes. It promises to bridge the urban rural divide.
The Reliance Jio launch has increased the competitive intensity. It can bring prices up to 4000 rupees for 4-G compliant devices and voice and data services from 300-500 per month. By seeing the rising competition with Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel plans to double its network by installation of over 70000 mobile sites. It will also deploy 160000 base stations in next three years.
Mukesh Ambani now holds a pan-India license and is the largest holder of spectrum in India. In one of the shareholders meet, Ambani said Reliance Jio is one of the largest ‘transformational greenfield telecom initiatives’ anywhere in the world. It will play a key role in propelling India into the Top 10 countries in the world from its current 142nd rank in internet penetration, he said.
Reliance Jio will be advantageous to India and will hold a great significance as 3G in India came with a very dull start with maximum 5 MHz of spectrum available to every operator due to which 3G speeds in India was very low but Reliance Jio has recorded one of the best upload and download speeds by proving its performance in stadium of Mumbai.. The operators that were dominating the price from last 3-4 years by forming a cartel, if any of them increased the price others also increased immediately. This led to an increase in 75% of tariff within 3-4 years. So with the entry of Reliance Jio in telecom industry people can expect a change in price because they want that services should be affordable by every citizen of India.
Some challenges that will be faced by Reliance Jio will be the market share, as Airtel Idea and Vodafone have a market share of more than 60% but reliance Jio has a market share of only 1.5% as of now. To increase their market share Reliance Jio tied up with Samsung. They have come up with an offer for the customers. It offers the customers to avail unlimited voice, video, data and SMS for a period of three 3 months from the date of activation of the Jio SIM. This is Jio’s first tie up with some other device maker. For availing this service users have to provide their personal details on MyJio app which will provide them a coupon through which they can go to any of nearest Reliance digital store along with the necessary documentation and get the Jio SIM card. This offer is available for only some selected 4G-enabled Samsung smartphones. The users need to insert the SIM in their smartphone and then verify it by calling 1977 and avail the Jio preview offer. Another challenge that can hamper the growth of Reliance Jio is, it is planning to carry voice over their LTE but very few smart phones are currently supporting it. It has come up with a service of one-click payment for its customers through tie up with Federal bank. Through this customers can retain their funds with their accounts. This tie up will help customers to complete their transactions without funding wallet.
Reliance Jio is providing legacy free digital services over an end to end all IP network. It has invested over 10,000 crore in this year’s auction in order to acquire 800 MHz spectrum in 10 circles and 1800 MHz in 6 circles. It has acquired this in a very cost effective manner. It aims at covering 100 nation’s population by 2018 and has built half a million square feet of cloud data centre’s and a multi terabit capacity international network. It can bring a change in India by bridging the gap between urban and rural.
