New Delhi: Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest person, has said Reliance Jio will be ready to commercially launch its much talked about 4G telecom services in second half of 2016, offering 80% 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% of India’s population will have high-speed, mobile broadband internet. ”So 80% of the 1.3 billion Indians will have high-speed, mobile internet. And by 2017, we would cover 90%. And by 2018, all of India would be covered by this digital infrastructure,” Mukesh Ambani said in an interview.
Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (R-Jio)’s 4G services are currently available to roughly 1,20,000 employees, their families and business partners.
The firm, a unit of Reliance Industries Ltd, has invested close to $15 billion in the telecom venture so far. R-Jio holds the highest amount of liberalized (free to use for any service) spectrum among telecom operators, totaling 51.1 MHz across the 800 MHz, 1,800 MHz and 2,300 MHz bands.
Ambani said digitization will be at the forefront of the digital revolution and India cannot be left behind.
“As we saw in the year 2012-13, India is 150th in the world in mobile broadband penetration as well as quality. And Jio has really been conceived to change this position,” he said.
Citing the example of US, where 4G services were launched five years ago, he said major carriers today cover only 75 to 80% of the market. “And we would be pretty much doing that in 2016 itself,” he said. RIL chairman and managing director said digital infrastructure is a very good investment.
“For me personally, we made this investment just to make sure that the youth of India, which is still the bulk of India. India as you know, is a very young country and it’s empowered, and they have an equal opportunity to not only prosper themselves but to contribute to this new world. ”And that was really the main reason. And that’s why we took very high risks,” he said.