Reliance Jio Infocomm applies for unified licence

[mmadhankumar]

Reliance Jio Infocomm Pvt Ltd, a unit of Reliance Industries, has applied for a unified licence on Thursday, people aware of the development said, a move which takes the company one step forward to launching telecom services.

Reliance Jio will have to pay an additional 1,658 crore to the government to comply with the new unified licence guidelines, issued earlier this month, the people told ET.

India recently issued guidelines to migrate to the new unified licence rules that will allow licensees to offer all telecommunications services under one permit. The rules also delinked license from spectrum, meaning operators would have to buy spectrum separately.

As per those rules, internet service providers that own airwaves for broadband wireless access (BWA), with a go-ahead from DoT to provide voice services using the airwaves, will pay an additional fee of around Rs 1,658 crore - the difference between entry fee for access service licence and internet service licence.

Reliance Jio Infocomm already has permits and airwaves for BWA services across all of India's 22 service areas, and has plans to offer fourth-generation (4G) services, which offer high speed broadband.

The company has also been testing voice calls on these networks. It got a go ahead from the telecom department to test 10,000 mobile numbers to offer such voice services a few months ago.

In June, the company signed a deal with Reliance Communications Ltd. to share its telecom towers. That had come after an April agreement, which would allow Reliance Jio to use RCom's fibre-optic network connectivity between cities.

The two companies are also likely to sign a third deal where Reliance Jio could use RCom's intra-city fibre-optic network.


Reliance Jio Infocomm applies for unified licence - The Economic Times