At the AGM of Reliance Industries, Mukesh Ambani told that Reliance Jio Infocomm network will be ubiquitous, covering 5,000 cities and towns (90% of urban population) and 215,000 villages “initially”. To put these numbers in perspective, Airtel is present in 5,121 towns and 461,000 villages as of Mar-2014. Thus Reliance Jio’s network coverage at launch is likely to be quite comparable to Airtel / Idea’s in terms of reach (more so in terms of revenue targeting, given the urban markets have
higher ARPU’s and hence account for significant share of revenues). Over the longer term,
Reliance Jio Infocomm
Reliance Jio Targets Big Bang Nationwide Launch of Fiber Broadband, Wi-Fi & 4G LTE Services
Last month in a conference of Indian Telecommunications progress on 4G-LTE front, Reliance Jio’s B2B executive made a presentation and excerpts from the same are as under.
Mukesh Ambani led Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJio) has laid lot of stress on the fact that fibre connectivity is required [Even in 1999, Mukesh did the same which is now with RCom]. Reliance Jio plans to connect as many buildings with fibre as possible. Over the longer term, RJio’s offering will be a mix of fibre [FTTH], LTE and WiFi. Management explained that chargeable WiFi (not free) will be an integral part of the company’s
Reliance Jio Connects 11,000 Towers With Dual Mode LTE
Telecommunications and Network Gear Industry channel checks suggest that Reliance Jio Infocomm has completed ~11,000 base station installations nationwide and is possibly targeting 30,000-45,000 base stations by launch. We expect this target to be met by Dec-14 coinciding with the Founder Birth Anniversary on Dec-28, 2014. Rollout is progressing at a pace of 2,500- 3,000 base stations per month (with the monthly pace accelerating). The launch could happen with 30,000-45,000 sites, with rollout obviously continuing post launch. More Importantly, the rollout is well spread out across the country and not concentrated in just the top
Can Reliance Jio Crack the Voice Market with 4G / VoLTE ?
Indian Telecommunications even today is 2G Voice dominated market with operators expanding footprint into rural areas to get the best they can from the infrastructure they have rolled out over decades. Even until last Quarter over 85% of Telcos’ Revenues were from Voice. In this backdrop, Mukesh Ambani managed Reliance Jio Infocomm, has no viable low-cost voice strategy, may struggle to get subscriber traction as a pure data approach has struggled globally. Reliance Jio is likely to target Tier 2 / 3 Cities for their 4G LTE Launch as it was easier for them to acquire Right of Way and light its Towers with virtually unlimited Optical Fiber Carrying Capacity.
We highlight that globally TD LTE is likely to be used for data offload in markets where both customer affordability and data usage are high, suggesting a mismatch
Reliance Jio Get Power of Media Properties after Network18 Buy-Out
Reliance Industries announced on May 29 that its board has approved the acquisition of a controlling stake in Network 18 Media & Investments, including its 51% subsidiary TV18 Broadcast and associate company Infomedia Press; together the group owns internet properties, e-commerce businesses and broadcast content. The board has approved funding of up to Rs40bn for the acquisition. The deal, to be done through a wholly owned subsidiary of RIL.
With this deal, Reliance Jio moves closer to convergence of telecom, media and internet in its business model, giving
Why Reliance Jio Needs sub 1GHz Spectrum for 4G LTE ?
Reliance Jio Infocomm the telecom arm of cash rich Reliance Industries Ltd has already acquired 1800MHz and 2300MHz spectrum to rollout Telecom services. Globally 1800/2100/2300MHz are high frequencies that telcos use for capacity, 700, 850 and 900MHz are globally the bands that telcos use for coverage, as these are low frequencies with long range, and hence help keep cell count to a minimum. In this background we explore why Reliance Jio needs a smaller Spectrum Band to deliver high QoS broadband experience and compete aggressively with incumbents.
700MHz / 900MHz Spectrum Feasibility
The government is likely to auction 30-35MHz of 700MHz in 2015-16. However, 700MHz base price may be set higher than 900MHz making it highly expensive. 700MHz LTE ecosystem is also two years behind 850. 900, being a European 3G band, is not a mainstream LTE band yet and perhaps for a long time. We feel Jio would only select LTE ready frequencies, which makes 700/850MHz a better bet.
Case for Reliance Jio to acquire 850MHz Spectrum for 4G LTE Services
850MHz already in commercial LTE deployment in a
Reliance Jio 4G-LTE Launch will not Derail 2G Voice Business
Reliance Jio Infocomm rollout can, at best, be gradual and, in part, complementary to existing telecom services and not competing and, as such, concerns are overdone about its entry in the 2G Voice Business. To understand this let us first have peek into RJio’s network.
Reliance Jio Infocomm’s Network Infrastructure Build Out
Reliance Jio’s 4G network will be built around 1.8GHz & 2.3 GHz, the company will need to deploy at least 0.15m BTS over next three years to have meaningful presence. In-building coverage will be an additional challenge that Jio faces as both the 1,800 MHz and 2,300 MHz spectrum
Reliance Jio Acquisition of Videocon + Merger with Tata DoCoMo, Aircel – A Case Study
Consolidation in the Indian Telecom industry is inevitable with weaker players such as Tata DoCoMo / Indicom looking to exit as its already negative networth worsens by the day. The current M&A Rules of the Government indicate 50% combined market share and 25% total spectrum cap (50% in a given band). Market share is based on both subscriber base (VLR-based) and adjusted gross revenues (AGR). We analyze on this front as bottomline of all the Challenger has been bleeding in red for quite few years now.
We have already enlightened that Reliance Jio Infocomm bid in circles where Videocon’s 1800Mhz Spectrum was
Reliance Jio likely to create 2 Business Units – 4G LTE Monetization
According to Analysys Mason, Reliance Jio Infocomm is expected to setup two separate business lines – one for traditional mobile business (competing with incumbent operators) and the other targeting homes (broadband and content distribution platform – competing with broadband players and distribution plays such as Cable and DTH).
Globally, LTE has been monetized either through Selling more data as LTE has higher throughput than other technologies Creating new revenue streams, which involves selling content/ applications (i.e. games, movies on demand, mobile TV etc). A hybrid model is increasingly being employed by telcos for monetizing their 4G networks. Since Reliance Jio is yet to launch 4G services, they are likely to adopt hybrid LTE Model going forward.
Reliance Jio Infocomm Launch in Late 2014 – A New Case for Price War
Reliance Jio Infocomm which is in advanced stages of Testing its 4G LTE networks is expected to launch its Telecom Services in late 2014 with the focus primarily being on data services (although they may launch Vo-LTE voice offerings). We expect Reliance Jio, Being a new entrant, to launch an aggressive offering to gain traction in the already overcrowded telcos market. (Historically, we have seen all new telcos use this approach to gain traction). This may force existing telcos to reduce tariffs to match the aggressive offering.
We believe any new competitor like Reliance Jio who