Reliance Jio launches 4G for employees

 Mukesh Ambani introduced his much-touted 4G telecom services on Sunday evening, restricting it only for Reliance employees for now, as the petroleum-to-retail corporate giant prepares to shake the telecom industry with a full-bloodied launch around March next year. For Ambani, this is the second calling in the telecom business after his first venture, Reliance Communications, went into the kitty of younger brother Anil as part of a family settlement between the siblings. On offer from Reliance Jio Infocomm will be low-cost 4G devices (under 'Lyf' brand) costing as low as Rs 4,000 and a host of services along with the regular voice and data. These will include a big collection of music (Jio Beats); around 200 television channels with back-up (Jio Play) and movies (Jio on-demand). At the commercial launch, Ambani is expected to go in for an aggressive pricing for his offerings which are expected to come bundled with a host of SIM cards (to make it a family offering) and large data-pack plans. The telecom entry is one of the group's most ambitious project to date (after retail) and it has pumped in nearly Rs 1 lakh crore into the business which aims to take on the established telecom behemoths such as homegrown Bharti Airtel, Britain's Vodafone and Aditya Birla group's Idea Cellular head-on.

Reliance Jio differs with Airtel, Vodafone and Idea on spectrum cap, reserve price of airwaves

Reliance Jio Infocomm has disagreed with GSM telcos Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea on spectrum limits for operators and the reserve price of airwaves to be auctioned, although it concurs that bandwidth for high-speed mobile broadband services shouldn't be offered for sale any time soon. Mukesh Ambani-controlled Jio, in a submission to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), said the government must abolish the cap on the amount of airwaves an operator can hold in a band, while retaining the overall limit of 25% in a circle. Responding to the regulator's consultation paper on valuation of the reserve price of airwaves in various bands, the company said, "Since the auctioned spectrum is technology neutral, intra-band spectrum caps have become redundant." Jio said band caps can constrain service providers and they are forced to opt for multiple bands. This takes away the benefits of a higher quantum of spectrum for mobile broadband services in terms of enhanced spectral efficiencies. However, other members of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) including Airtel, Vodafone and Idea, suggested that the cap within a band should be retained at 50% and sought an increase in the overall cap in a circle from the current 25%.

Full spectrum of bad, good for telecom

successful auction of airwaves and the launch of 4G services were the high points for India's telecom industry in 2015 even as the lingering problem of call drops and bottlenecks in infrastructure, notably on transmission towers, remained major areas of concern. Early in the year, the country saw the biggest auction of spectrum when the government garnered Rs 1.10 lakh crore ($17.6 billion) to licence 380.75MHz of airwaves in the 900MHz, 1,800MHz and 800MHz and 2100MHz bands across 17 out of 22 telecom circles. The telecom service providers that participated in the marathon auctioning were: Idea Cellular, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, Reliance Communications, Reliance Jio, Tata Teleservices, Telenor and Aircel.