Reliance Jio, the operator which recently crossed
the 100 Million subscriber mark, is aggressively making its place in the highly
competitive Indian telecom space. The operator during its free services
offering single-handedly managed to lift India from the 150th position globally
for mobile data consumption to the current number one position. CEO Mukesh
Ambani declared that Jio subscribers alone consume as much data as all the
subscribers of all operators in USA put together.
The reason why Jio can offer this quantum of data to
its subscribers without getting its network choked is because it has Fiber
backhaul for its BTS as compared to microwave backhaul used by the incumbent
operators which cannot handle this amount of load. Jio recently announced its
prime membership from 1st April for its subscribers joining the network on or
before 31st March 2017 for a one-time fee or Rs.99.
Once the wireless segment gets stable, Jio will turn
its focus to the wired broadband segment where it will offer FTTH services with
speeds up to 100 Mbps under the name Jio Fiber. Jio is laying out optic fibre
across the length and breadth of the country at war footing, subject to the
right of way obtained from various municipal corporations within the city
limits.
In Mumbai, the operator is currently offering free
Jio fiber services in select locations and housing complexes with truly
unlimited data usage, similar to the beta testing phase for employees and their
family and friends and early adopters of LYF handsets before the commercial
launch of wireless services. Currently, people residing in the locations where
Jio is offering the free preview just need to pay a Rs.4500 refundable deposit
for the consumer premise equipment, which they can get back if they choose to
not continue with the service once Jio starts to charge for it.
I visited an acquaintance’s place where the Jio
fiber was installed and decided to test the network performance. In the image
above, the pic to the right shows the square modem cum wifi router with Jio
branding while the smaller device held above it is the splitter for the optic
fiber. The screenshot in the middle shows the speed test result using the net
velocity app. I got a download speed of 93 Mbps and upload speed of 78 Mbps
while the latency was just 7 ms. This is an ideal performance since the network
is not yet loaded with only a handful of users utilising it, the actual
performance will be visible after commercial launch.
Other developments:
Jio is also working on its IPTV solution where it
will offer 500+
live TV channels on its Android-based set top box including full HD
channels streaming over its fiber broadband network. Jio has also signed a deal
with AirWire to offer connected car IoT device in India. Jio will soon launch
its smart home solutions including remote unlocking of doors and controlling of
lights and AC through the smart home app.
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