Mukesh Ambani, India's richest person, Sunday said Reliance Jio will be ready to commercially launch its much talked about 4G telecom services in second half of 2016, offering 80 per cent of Indians high-speed mobile internet as well as voice services.
Reliance Jio had in late December unveiled fourth generation (4G) service for its employees, marking Ambani's return to the telecom sector years after Reliance Group's telecom unit had gone to his younger brother Anil following a split between the two siblings.
"We'll be ready to launch in the second half of 2016. 80 per cent of India's population will have high-speed, mobile broadband internet,"Ambani said.
"So 80 percent of the 1.3 billion Indians will have high-speed, mobile internet. And by 2017, we would cover 90 per cent. And by 2018, all of India would be covered by this digital infrastructure," he told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in an interview.
Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (R-Jio)'s 4G services are currently available to roughly 120,000 employees, their families and business partners.
The firm, a unit of Reliance Industries Ltd, has invested close to USD 15 billion in the telecom venture so far. R-Jio holds the highest amount of liberalised (free to use for any service) spectrum among telecom operators, totalling 51.1 MHz across the 800 MHz, 1,800 MHz and 2,300 MHz bands.
Zakaria travelled from New York to Mumbai to meet Ambani at his residence Antilia. He is the only person to have interviewed Ambani twice.
Asked about Reliance's massive investment in acquiring airwaves and laying physical infrastructure for offering high-speed internet services, Ambani said he believed that humanity is at the doorstep of massive change, and "we're just at the beginning of the information and the digital age."
"And in the next 20 years, in a network society, we are going to have change much more than what we have seen in the last hundred years," he said.
Ambani said digitisation will be at the forefront of the digital revolution and India cannot be left behind.
http://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/reliance-jio-launch-delayed-again-roll-out-of-commercial-4g-services-later-this-year-says-mukesh-ambani/51077514
Reliance Jio had in late December unveiled fourth generation (4G) service for its employees, marking Ambani's return to the telecom sector years after Reliance Group's telecom unit had gone to his younger brother Anil following a split between the two siblings.
"We'll be ready to launch in the second half of 2016. 80 per cent of India's population will have high-speed, mobile broadband internet,"Ambani said.
"So 80 percent of the 1.3 billion Indians will have high-speed, mobile internet. And by 2017, we would cover 90 per cent. And by 2018, all of India would be covered by this digital infrastructure," he told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in an interview.
Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (R-Jio)'s 4G services are currently available to roughly 120,000 employees, their families and business partners.
The firm, a unit of Reliance Industries Ltd, has invested close to USD 15 billion in the telecom venture so far. R-Jio holds the highest amount of liberalised (free to use for any service) spectrum among telecom operators, totalling 51.1 MHz across the 800 MHz, 1,800 MHz and 2,300 MHz bands.
Zakaria travelled from New York to Mumbai to meet Ambani at his residence Antilia. He is the only person to have interviewed Ambani twice.
Asked about Reliance's massive investment in acquiring airwaves and laying physical infrastructure for offering high-speed internet services, Ambani said he believed that humanity is at the doorstep of massive change, and "we're just at the beginning of the information and the digital age."
"And in the next 20 years, in a network society, we are going to have change much more than what we have seen in the last hundred years," he said.
Ambani said digitisation will be at the forefront of the digital revolution and India cannot be left behind.
http://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/reliance-jio-launch-delayed-again-roll-out-of-commercial-4g-services-later-this-year-says-mukesh-ambani/51077514
