Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani today announced that Jio will start giving out connections of its much-awaited broadband service, Jio GigaFiber, starting on August 15.
Surprisingly, Ambani said the service will be available in 1,100 cities of India from Day 1, and not 100 cities as was announced two years ago.
This means that Jio GigaFiber will be available in most of the bigger towns in India, including practically all district headquarters.
Jio GigaFiber will open for registration on August 15, and customers can request for installation using the Jio website and MyJio app.
However, users should expect some delays as the company will give priority to those locations and colonies where demand is very high, when giving connections.
“Make sure you register your interest, and more importantly make sure that your neighbors register so that your locality will be among the first to get,” said Ambani.
Ambani pointed out that Jio GigaFiber is the largest fixed line broadband rollout anywhere in the world, “with rollout happening in 1,100 cities of India simultaneously.”
Ambani said India will see a similar revolution in fixed broadband after GigaFiber introduction as was seen in wireless broadband after Jio 4G was introduced. The country became No.1 in wireless data consumption after the company launched its 4G service two years ago.
He said that more than 80% of data consumption happens indoors on fixed line broadband in advanced countries.
“India is 134th in fixed broadband,” he said. “Poor fixed line infrastructure has been a key reason for this… Jio is determined to move India to be in the top five in fixed line broadband too, in the coming years.”
Ambani said his company has already invested Rs 2.5 lakh cr in creating a pan-India fiber and radio backbone — more than what a company like Idea Cellular has invested in its entire lifetime.
The fiber network, so far, has been used for connecting the mobile towers to the central network and the Internet.
“We will now extend this fiber connectivity to homes, SMEs, large enterprises,” he said. “We will introduce the most advanced broadband connectivity solutions in 1,100 cities,” he said.
Ambani said Jio GigaFiber will enable streaming of ultra high-definition video, high-quality multi-party video conference, virtual reality gaming and virtual reality shopping.
The company also announced features such as video surveillance solutions for connected homes. It also showcased solutions for controlling switches, ACs and other smart appliances using Jio GigaFiber.
Jio’s set-top-box will come with a built in camera that can be used to make video calls to any other Jio GigaFiber customer or phone or tablet user.
The company also unveiled a higher-end form of Jiophone, called Jiophone 2, which comes with a larger display and a full Qwerty keypad.
The company also announced the launch of Youtube and WhatsApp on Jiophone, the KaOS-powered proprietary device designed to make 4G accessible to even the lowest income customers.
The company also said its nearly 20 cr users are consuming about 240 cr GB of data per month, which works out to about 12 GB per user per month — the highest data consumption among all operators in India.
They also use 530 cr minutes per day and 340 cr hours of video per month.
You can read Mukesh Ambani’s full speech