Jio GigaFiber announcements were made at the Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) 42nd Annual General Meeting (AGM). The biggest news was of course was the date of the Jio Fiber commercial launch – September 5. The date also marks the third anniversary of the launch of Jio’s services.
RIL Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani revealed that so far, Jio GigaFiber has received 15 million registrations for its Fiber home broadband service, and it is aimed to reach 20 million residences and 15 million business establishments across 1,600 towns. Currently, Jio GigaFiber is in 5 lakh homes on a pilot basis. To recall, Jio GigaFiber has been in testing since 2016, despite only being announced last month.
Jio Fiber plans will be priced between Rs. 700 and Rs. 10,000 per month, “meant to suit every budget, every need, and every segment,” Ambani said. He also revealed that with Jio Fiber, voice calls from home to any Indian operator (mobile or fixed) will be free “forever”.
As for fixed line international voice calling, Ambani announced the “lowest fixed line rates for international calling.” The default tariffs on the Jio Home phone will be priced from a fifth to a tenth of existing industry tariffs. An unlimited international calling pack for calls to US and Canada was also announced for Rs. 500.
At the AGM, Ambani also revealed that Jio Fiber plans will come bundled with subscriptions to most leading premium OTT applications, possibly referring to Hotstar Premium and Netflix. As for watching new movies, premium Jio Fiber customers will be able to watch movies the same day they are released. The service is called Jio First-Day-First-Show, which will be launched in middle of 2020.
Jio Fiber subscribers will also get a mobility service, called Jio Postpaid Plus. Meant to be a “platinum grade service”, the Jio Postpaid Plus will offer priority SIM set-up service at home, family plans with data sharing, international roaming, and phone upgrades at preferential rates. More details about these tariffs will be available on Jio.com and the MyJio app on September 5.
Ambani also revealed that the Jio GigaFiber IoT (Internet of Things) platform will be commercially available from January 1, 2020. He added that in 2 years, it is estimated there will be 2 billion connected IoT devices in India, and Jio aims to connect over 1 billion IoT devices. The company is looking to get revenue from home, enterprise, and MSME broadband services in India.
Separately, the Jio set-top box was announced, and it is claimed to be designed to accept TV signals from LCO partners. Also demoed at the event was the use-case applications Jio HoloBoard mixed reality headset, developed in collaboration with Tesseract.
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