Reliance Jio GigaFiber to offer broadband-landline-TV combo for Rs600 a month
23 Apr 2019
Reliance Jio GigaFiber the direct-to-home optical network of Reliance Jio Infocomm, will offer a broadband-landline-TV combo service for Rs600 per month.
Besides, the Jio Gigafiber offers to upgrade its service with additional facilities to connect at least 40 devices to a smart home network for a total of Rs1,000 per month, say a report in LiveMint,
Reliance Jio is currently testing its GigaFiber services in cities like New Delhi and Mumbai, providing 100 GB of data at a speed of 100 MBps for free (customers do have to pay a one-time deposit of 4,500 for the proprietary router). Jio will add telephone and television services to this within the next three months. The landline services will come with unlimited calling facility, while television services will be delivered through IPTV. All three services will remain free for about a year when the service will be commercially rolled out.
“All these offerings will be powered through an ONT (Optical Network Terminal) box router which can connect 40-45 devices such as mobile phones, smart TVs, laptops, tablets and a range of smart devices. While the triple combo—which will offer 600 channels with seven-day catch-up option, landline and 100 MBps broadband—will be priced ?600 a month, the tariff for adding other smart home services may cost extra and depending on the plan, the tariff could go up to Rs1,000 a month”
The wired broadband market in India remains under-penetrated mainly because of the unreliable service provided by state-run telcos – BSNL and MTNL – with only 18.29 million users against 531.54 Million mobile subscribers.
A combo offer for all three services, with 10x the speed, and without varying my monthly cost, would seems to be an attractive proposition but depending on one source for all services will also have its drawbacks.
Reliance Jio GigaFiber announced its roll-out in July 2018 after an extended period of beta testing across several major Indian cities. While the initial announcement did not make any claims with regards to the speeds that will be offered, previous reports had claimed that the service could provide up to 1 GBps speeds, allowing customers to use services such as UHD media, multi-party video conferencing, VR gaming and much more.
Jio GigaFiber was expected to make another disruptive entry in India’s broadband market, much like how Jio did for the telecom sector.