Reliance Jio granted unified licence

Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (RJIL), the telecom arm of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), has been granted unified licence that would enable it to offer both voice and high-speed data services.

Last week,the telecom ministry had approved a pan Indi 4G licence to RJIL, the country's only pan-India 4G spectrum holder, owned by Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd.

The unified licence makes Reliance Jio the only operator to own nationwide fourth generation radio waves – to offer both voice and high-speed data services to subscribers across all the 22 telecom circles in the country.

The Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio is the only private player with broadband spectrum in all the 22 telecom circles of India. The company had earlier paid Rs1,673 crore to the government as entry fee to migrate to unified licence.

The company plans to provide high speed internet connectivity and digital services on a pan-India basis.

In addition, Reliance Jio plans to offer solutions across various digital services in key domains such as education, healthcare, security and financial services. The company has put in place a team
of 4,000 employees as it prepares for the launch.

''Reliance Jio has finalised the key vendor and supplier partnerships that are required for the launch of our services, and is making rapid progress in building the critical infrastructure needed to launch its services,'' said a company statement.

Reliance Industries returned to the telecom services market in 2010 by purchasing fourth generation broadband wireless access spectrum in an auction.

The company has since been setting up its network and is currently running trial networks at some locations in Delhi, Mumbai and its petroleum refinery complex at Jamnagar, Gujarat.

Over the past one year, Reliance Jio had entered into key definitive agreements with Reliance Communications for sharing inter-city optic fibre, as many as 45,000 towers and for joint working arrangements for additional towers to be built at new locations (See: Ambani brothers in Rs1,200-crore telecom infrastructure deal).

The company has also struck an agreement for international data connectivity with Bharti to utilise dedicated fibre pair on Bharti's i2i submarine cable that connects India and Singapore.

Mobile data has been slow to take off in India on account of high tariffs as well as lack of high quality and ubiquitous network coverage.