Reliance AGM 2018: No tariff cuts as Jio shifts focus to broadband services

Analysts are not surprised at the target given the potential and Reliance Jio's fibre presence.

Reliance AGM 2018 : Reliance Industries’ (RIL) 41st annual general meeting saw the entire conversation centred around the disruption Jio was going to cause this time around. While telecom players heaved a sigh of relief as there were no further tariff cuts, the action shifted to the fixed line broadband services. RIL’s chairman Mukesh Ambani announced the launch of Jio’s fibre to home or fixed line broadband services called Jio GigaFiber as well as new offers for the JioPhone customers. Following feedback to the initial registration, the company, which will launch the service (Jio GigaFiber) from August 15, will take a call on where the services will start rolling out first.

“Your company has already invested over Rs 2,500 billion for creating state-of-the-art digital infrastructure to provide mobile and broadband connectivity across the country, with the largest fibre footprint. We will now extend this fibre connectivity to homes, merchants, small and medium enterprises and large enterprises simultaneously across 1,100 cities to offer the most advanced fibre-based broadband connectivity solutions,” said Ambani.

The wired broadband arm, has already started offering what they claim to be ‘ultra-high-speed’ fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband connections with 1.1 terabytes (TB) of free data at a speed of 100 megabits per second (mbps) in select markets in the country. The company says it has rolled out 300,000 kilometres of optical fibre network in India and has a target of crossing 50 million households.

Analysts are not surprised at the target given the potential and Reliance Jio’s fibre presence. The number of wireline broadband subscribers is pegged at just 18 million in a total of 420 million broadband subscribers, a penetration of less than 10 per cent of the households in the country. Similarly, there are 68 million DTH subscribers, indicating a household penetration of less than 30 per cent. “The small base, along with rapidly increasing content, and improving bandwidth, translate into good growth potential for these services, especially fixedline broadband, says Harsh Jagnani, sector head & vice-president – Corporate Ratings, ICRA.

Story By BS