NEW DELHI: Reliance Industries has said its telecom arm Reliance Jio Infocomm will launch its 4G LTE services at "substantially lower" rates than rivals, rekindling fears of a bruising tariff war in an already competitive industry.
"Affordability is a key to success of the digital revolution. Jio will make its services accessible and affordable to all consumers," Reliance Industries (RIL) said in its annual report for 2015-16 released on Thursday.
"It has developed its network at an extremely efficient cost base coupled with significant operating efficiencies. These efficiencies will enable it to offer services at a substantially lower cost than others," the company added.
Jio is expected to launch its services commercially in the coming months. Mid-July, the company had said it is in a "high state of readiness" to start offering its 4G services, except for in four circles where it could take four to six more weeks to prepare the network.
In the report, RIL said Jio is already present in all 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.
"Our customer offerings are built on four key strategic dimensions, viz. widest coverage, substantially superior network quality, transformational data capacity and affordable services. We have made considerable progress on all of these fronts during the year," RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani said in the report.
He said the ongoing test programme with 1.5 million users on board "will be progressively upgraded into commercial operations in the coming months".
With respect to sales and distribution, Jio will have half-a-million activation outlets and close to a million recharge outlets at launch. This will be in addition to the digital channels that Jio is promoting for seamless activation and recharge facilities for customers. All outlets will have real-time access to the 1,072 Jio offices set up across the country.
"Jio has on-boarded most of these outlets and provided them merchant devices and/or solutions to cater to their business and payment requirements," RIL said.
Jio opened up its network to staff and others late last year, and currently serves to more than 1.5 million subscribers, which include customers of its LYF smartphones, employees and business partners including retailers.
The telco has also begun the rollout of its data preview offer for Samsung 4G smartphone users in India. A similar pact with Apple and other handset vendors is also said to be in the works.
RIL said Retail Retail's LYF branded smartphones already account for 7.1% of India's smartphone market and that it's already the fifth largest smartphone company by shipments.
http://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes....l/53546087
Sent from my SM-A500G using Tapatalk
"Affordability is a key to success of the digital revolution. Jio will make its services accessible and affordable to all consumers," Reliance Industries (RIL) said in its annual report for 2015-16 released on Thursday.
"It has developed its network at an extremely efficient cost base coupled with significant operating efficiencies. These efficiencies will enable it to offer services at a substantially lower cost than others," the company added.
Jio is expected to launch its services commercially in the coming months. Mid-July, the company had said it is in a "high state of readiness" to start offering its 4G services, except for in four circles where it could take four to six more weeks to prepare the network.
In the report, RIL said Jio is already present in all 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.
"Our customer offerings are built on four key strategic dimensions, viz. widest coverage, substantially superior network quality, transformational data capacity and affordable services. We have made considerable progress on all of these fronts during the year," RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani said in the report.
He said the ongoing test programme with 1.5 million users on board "will be progressively upgraded into commercial operations in the coming months".
With respect to sales and distribution, Jio will have half-a-million activation outlets and close to a million recharge outlets at launch. This will be in addition to the digital channels that Jio is promoting for seamless activation and recharge facilities for customers. All outlets will have real-time access to the 1,072 Jio offices set up across the country.
"Jio has on-boarded most of these outlets and provided them merchant devices and/or solutions to cater to their business and payment requirements," RIL said.
Jio opened up its network to staff and others late last year, and currently serves to more than 1.5 million subscribers, which include customers of its LYF smartphones, employees and business partners including retailers.
The telco has also begun the rollout of its data preview offer for Samsung 4G smartphone users in India. A similar pact with Apple and other handset vendors is also said to be in the works.
RIL said Retail Retail's LYF branded smartphones already account for 7.1% of India's smartphone market and that it's already the fifth largest smartphone company by shipments.
http://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes....l/53546087
Sent from my SM-A500G using Tapatalk