Jio Fiber to launch on 5 September; Jio to partner Microsoft for cloud

The base plan for the fibre-to-the-home service starts at speed of 100 MBPS and goes up to 1GBPS, with prices ranging from Rs700 to Rs10,000 per month. The RIL chairman also announced ‘Jio First Day First Show’ plan under which Premium JioFibre customers will be able to watch movies in their living rooms on the day of the release. This will be rolled out in 2020. 

Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani had announced the Jio Gigafiber services during the company’s AGM last year.

Ambani also announced a partnership with Microsoft under which Jio will set up data centres across India and Microsoft will bring the cloud platform.

Reliance Jio, he said, will provide connectivity and Jio-Azure cloud service to Indian technology startups absolutely free. "We will provide a bundle of connectivity and essential business productivity and automation tools to Indian small businesses for 1/10th the cost at 1,500 per month," said Ambani.

"Our merchant Point of Sale (POS) Solution – Jio Prime Partner POS – is integral to our plan to create an ecosystem around small merchants. This user-friendly digital platform will modernise even the smallest kirana shop to become a digitised store," Mukesh Ambani said.

Regarding Reliance's New Commerce, Mukesh Ambani said, "In the true Reliance ethos, we are working towards enriching and empowering nearly 30 million merchants and Kirana shop owners with our end-to-end digital and physical distribution stack. Reliance’s New Commerce platform represents the Digital Symbiosis of Big and Small Enterprises. I believe that the Small must not only survive, but also thrive in New India."

On the retail sector in India, the RIL CMD said, "Today, Reliance Retail is the only Indian retailer to be ranked in the Global 100 top retailers. Over the next five years, our aim is to be amongst the world’s top 20 retailers."

"The Retail business has grown phenomenally, registering a seven-fold increase in revenue and a 14-fold increase in profit in the last six years. Relentless focus on operating discipline has resulted in a 3-fold rise in per-store productivity in last five years," Mukesh Ambani said.

“It is my passion and conviction that New India will lead  and not follow the advanced nations of the world in adopting, even creating disruptive technologies that will decide the winners and losers of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” Ambani said

Jio and Microsoft have entered into a long-term alliance to accelerate the digital transformation of India to launch new cloud data centers, ensuring more organisations can access the tools and platforms they need to build their own digital capability, said Mukesh Ambani.

"With the Jio-Microsoft Alliance, Jio will set up a network of large world-class datacenters across India powered by Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform," the RIL CMD said.

Reliance Jio is also setting up a pan-India Edge Computing and Content Distribution network starting with tens of thousands of nodes, Ambani said, adding that Reliance Industries is now investing in scaling up advanced technologies in India, even ahead of the rest of the world. "Over the next 12 months, Reliance Jio will install one of the largest blockchain networks in the world in India, with tens of thousands of nodes operational on day one," he said.

Elaborating on the Jio Forever Plan, Mukesh Ambani said under the Jio Fiber Welcome Offer, customers opting for annual plan “Jio Forever plan” – will get a full HD television or a home PC and a 4K Set-top box absolutely free."

Under Jio Fiber tariff plan, customers pay only for data. Voice calls across India from Jio landline will be absolutely free forever. The most basic Jio Fiber plan starts with 100 mbps speed and goes up to 1 Gbps. 

"Premium JioFiber customers will be able to watch movies in their living rooms, on the same day of their release. We call this Jio First Day First Show. We plan to launch this service in middle of 2020," said Ambani.

While announcing that unlimited international calling pack will be available at Rs500 for US and Canada, Mukesh Ambani said, JioFiber will come bundled with subscriptions to most leading OTT platforms.

"We are pricing our plans at less than one-tenth of global rates. JioFiber will be priced between Rs700 and Rs10,000 a month to provide for all budgets. Customers will have to pay either for voice or data. I am pleased to announce that voice calls will be free for home broadband subscribers," said Ambani.

The pricing for the broadband plans is expected to be in line with peers but RIL will sweeten the deal by making it a triple play — a combination of broadband-landline-TV OTT service. A base price of ranging between Rs 500-600 for GigaFiber is expected, according to CNBC-TV18 report.

The conglomerate’s stock rallied from Rs 964 recorded on 5 July 2018 when RIL held its 41st AGM, to Rs 1,162 registered on Friday, 9 August, which translates into a rally of over 20 per cent.

As of last RIL AGM, Jio had 250 million users whose per month data usage totaled 240 crore GB while voice usage on the network stood at 530 crore minutes per day. The Jio users’ video consumption amounted to 340 crore hours per month.

Responding to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's appeal to entrepreneurs regarding investment in the union territoy of Jammu and Kashmir, Mukesh Ambani said, "We stand committed with people of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. We'll create a special task force and you will soon see many announcements in the Valley."

Reliance Industries, the country's largest company by market capitalisation, reported a consolidated profit after tax of Rs 10,104 crore for the June quarter, up 6.8 percent from a year ago. The net profit also beat a poll of analysts which had pegged the profits at Rs 9,852 crore.