Billionaire Mukesh Ambani will re-enter the telecom business with a Rs. 4,000 4G smartphone by December, offering voice and data services for as low as Rs. 300-Rs 500 per month.
Reliance Jio Infocomm, which will commercially launch 4G services by December, has the largest footprint of liberalised spectrum in the country, acquired at a cost of Rs. 34,000 crore.

Speaking at annual shareholders meeting of Reliance Industries (RIL), Ambani said ensuring availability of affordable 4G smartphones has been one of the topmost priorities for Jio.

"The combination of Jio's strong initiatives and a supportive global environment, gives me the confidence that we will see 4G LTE smartphones in India at prices below Rs. 4,000 by December of this year," Ambani said.

Jio plans to offer telecom, high speed data, digital commerce, media and payment services for about Rs. 300 to Rs. 500 per month.

"In our digital business, our plan is to provide the same power of computing, communication and information to every individual, whether in towns or rural areas, that the US President had ten to fifteen years ago. All this at about Rs. 300 to Rs. 500 per month," the Chairman of RIL said.

He said Jio is now present in all of the 29 states with a direct physical presence in nearly 18,000 cities and towns whereas wireless footprint covers over one lakh villages.

"We are expanding this footprint to cover nearly 80 percent of India's population by the end of this year. Our roadmap is to have 100 percent national coverage within the next three years," he said.

Ambani said Jio is well-positioned to emerge as a global tier-1 telecom operator but it is much more than just telecom services.

"We followed an integrated business strategy from the very beginning, and today, Jio is capable of offering a unique combination of telecom, high speed data, digital commerce, media and payment services," he added.

The firm in April launched its first mobile application, 'Jio Chat' that integrates chat, voice, video calling, conferencing, file sharing, photo sharing among others.

"In just the first few weeks of operations, Jio Chat now has a million active users, without any paid promotions or over paid advertisements whatsoever," Ambani said.

Apart from that, the company plans to unveil many more applications in coming weeks like switch-and-walk, which allows customers to copy everything from their old phone to a new phone, 'Jio Drive' which brings cloud capabilities to smartphone, 'Jio Play' that will allow users to watch TV channels on their handsets, 'Jio Beats' which is a music app, and 'Jio Mags' and 'Jio News' among others.

Ambani said, this year, acquisition of Network 18 was completed.

"Network 18 has 17 news channels, 14 entertainment channels, in 8 languages, and a strong set of Internet businesses that will be well positioned to transition to the Jio platform," he said.

By 2017-18, it will be the most integrated TV mobile set of content in India, he said.

The RIL Chairman said Jio has deployed a network of nearly 250,000 route kilometres of fibre optics and over the next 3 years, it will more than double than this by deploying fibre optics in the last mile.

He said by April next year, Jio would have connected over 1 million homes via fibre optics with a capability of scaling up in the top 50 cities of India.

"Jio is the only operator in the world providing next generation digital services over an end-to-end all-IP network," he added.

Ambani said that Jio is also working on its digital money and digital payment business.

"Jio Money will play a crucial role in digitisation of payments in India by offering a platform for ubiquitous, affordable and secure digital payments," he said.

The company has partnered with State Bank of India, to apply for the Payment Bank licence.

"The Payment Bank, if approved, will complement our initiatives on the digital payments business and also enable distribution of financial services by leveraging on retail and other Jio business in the most accessible, simple and affordable manner with specific focus on the financially excluded," Ambani said.

 Source:NDTV

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Reliance Jio to begin commercial operations by December this year

Speaking at the annual shareholders general meeting, Chairman of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), Mukesh Ambani said that Reliance Jio will begin operating in the country on a commercial level starting December 2015.
The services are set to begin over the next few months in a closed beta program, but will be available to all later this year. Reliance Jio also plans to offer budget 4G capable handsets to customers. It is said that they will offer phones at under Rs. 4,000, which could be terrific news for the market, if and when it materializes.

"Reliance Jio is currently in pre-launch testing and stabilising phase. The key components of broadband network is now operational and we will play an important role in the digital revolution planned by the Indian government," Mukesh Ambani said during the meet.

The Reliance broadband service will be offered to nearly 80% of India's population by the end of 2015, he said. We are yet to get concrete information on the arrival of Reliance Jio in specific locations, but it seems like Metros and big cities will be covered first.

However, the company aims higher than just the metropolitan cities and is seemingly keen to bring its services to remote locations of the country as well. The company is already said to have invested nearly Rs. 60,000 crore in Jio and its broadband services.

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Reliance Jio launch: Airtel, Vodafone, Idea unfazed

Reliance Jio Infocomm's plans to launch 4G services in December has given incumbents such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular enough time to deploy their own high-speed broadband airwaves to unleash aggressive data plans and take on the Mukesh Ambani-owned adversary.

Industry insiders and analysts also say Reliance Jio's rollout is fraught with challenges, given that voice offerings on the 4G-LTE technology platform, using the 2,300MHz band of airwaves, is yet to develop globally. Voice currently still makes up over 80% of industry revenue.

"We don't see much of an impact of Jio's December rollout, given that this is going to be phased and a pan-India presence is quite some time away," said a chief executive of a leading telco, who did not wish to be named. "Jio's scattered spectrum holdings across multiple bands, would pose challenges for seamless delivery of high-speed data services on-the-go".

He said voice over LTE (VoLTE) had "security and delivery issues, which they (read: Jio) would have to contend with".

At its annual shareholders' meeting Friday, Jio Chairman Mukesh Ambani said the company is in the throes of pre-launch testing and standardization drill of its digital broadband network that is equipped to handle both data and voice using 'long term evolution' or LTE — a technology standard for offering high-speed 4G services.

Another top executive of a leading GSM carrier said Jio's biggest challenge would be offering voice and data services seamlessly across its countrywide LTE network.

"Since there's zero clarity on whether Jio would offer a quality voice service on LTE, it remains to be seen if their data-dominant offering appeals to the mass market, given that 85% of industry revenues still stem from voice," he said. Jaideep Ghosh, partner, management consulting, KPMG in India seconds the emotion. "Customer acquisitions will be Jio's biggest worry as today's announcements suggest it is primarily focusing on data play."

According to Ghosh, unless Jio is able to bring much more to the table, both on the voice and data fronts, compared to what incumbents offer, it would be very difficult to "wean away" customers from the top three carriers.

Jio has said its mobile offerings of voice and data would be at Rs 300-500 price levels. Similar offerings currently cost around Rs 1,000 in the market.

KPMG's Ghosh also said sub-Rs 4,000 4G devices, be it tablets or smartphones, "is unlikely to galvanise revenues or subscriber market share for Jio as urban telecom penetration is already over 100% and rural penetration is also around 50%".

A top executive of one of India's biggest GSM carriers noted that there was "a conspicuous absence of any voice strategy" in Jio's announcements at the Reliance Industries AGM on Friday. "One mustn't forget that voice remains the dominant telecom business driver in India, given that mobile carriers collectively generate nearly 4 billion incremental voice minutes a day."

Analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, however, said "dual sim smartphones" could be an option for potential customers. "Given the lack of a traditional voice offering by Jio, we believe potential dual sim smartphones could be attractive to consumers as they could continue to use their existing telco SIM for voice calls and use Jio's sim for access to cheaper, high-speed data offerings," said the US brokerage in a note.

Still, the December launch, as opposed to industry expectations of mid-July-August, have given incumbents ample time to leverage their 4G spectrum wins in the past two auctions and cut data rates, said BK Syngal, ex-chairman of erstwhile VSNL (now Tata Communications).

Any cut in data rates by existing players, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said, would, however, lead to another tariff war and further hurt a debt-laden sector.



Rise and rise of Internet of Things in India
IoT, or Internet of Things, can be explained as the networking of physical objects through the use of embedded sensors which collect information about the objects, their surroundings and communicate the same to other objects, linked through wired or wireless networks.

It started as the movement of taking control of devices and making objects speak to one another. Now, the focus seems to be on making things intelligent. In the process, IoT has morphed to IoE (Internet of Everything) where anything may be connected anytime, anywhere, on any network and be accessible to anybody.

Globally, IoT is revolutionising traditional value chains and is fundamentally changing how products are going to be created, marketed, sold and serviced. It represents a huge market opportunity with some estimates topping $ 9 trillion by 2020.


Indian angle
Most of the buzz about IoT today is around companies, concepts and use cases that originated in the West and the Far East.

The Indian IoT story had a quiet beginning but now it is showing signs of going into mainstream rapidly. Understandably, most players in the space are young companies.

However, the local eco-system is maturing quickly. Pune-based CarIQ (www.cariq.in) has already gone through four rounds of collecting orders for their intelligent device and should start shipping it out by the end of June 2015. Their promise: predict potential problems in your car and get help resolving them. Bengaluru's Beaconifi (www.beaconifi.it) recently went public with the announcement that it had connected more than 1,000 local stores in Bengaluru with sensors that could guide customers to the right deals in the right stores. Another exciting new prospect is Entrib (www.entrib.com) from Pune that is promising to revolutionise productivity and quality on the shop floor through the use of IoT. On the entertainment front, there's TeeWee (www.teewee.in) from Bengaluru that has come up with a HDMI dongle that will help stream any kind of media to a TV at the tap of a button. Notable among the IoT infrastructure players is Axelta (www.axelta.com) that has a centre in Hyderabad, which is developing some frameworks to facilitate communication among connected devices, allowing brands and consumers to truly harness the power of IoT.

In 2014, the Government of India (GoI) announced its plans to create a USD 15 billion IoT marketplace in India by 2020. The Draft Policy specifies plans:
· To undertake capacity development (human and technology) for IoT specific skills
· To undertake research and development activities for all assisting technologies
· To develop IoT products specific to Indian needs in different domains

GoI's current big push on financial inclusion also has to leverage IoT in a significant way. The "unbanked" will, more often than not, be miles away from the nearest bank branch. Banks have begun employing 'business correspondents' in remote areas to provide the basic banking services to such folks. Connected devices that are in touch with the banking back offices are fundamental to such initiatives. Whether it is a rudimentary "travelling ATM" or a card reader, these devices are all part of the IoT ecosystem in India.

While GoI is placing a lot of importance on IoT as a space, the actual consumer adoption of IoT in India is expected to be slow, owing to the following reasons.
· The Internet, though widespread, is still not a reliable service in all areas. Speed and quality of service are often associated with the price one pays.
· Connected devices themselves are not inexpensive. Communication and connectivity do come at a price.
· Security, too, is often a concern. Many connected devices have been proven to have security loopholes, leaving them vulnerable to hacking and potential data losses.

Another major deterrent to rapid adoption of the IoT in India is the fact that most of the IoT consumer use cases, till date, have been designed keeping the western consumer in mind. Google's NEST thermostat is a runaway success in the US but has little application inside the typical Indian home. That said, there have been some interesting developments in the Indian IoT consumer space as well. Take the case of a group of students in Surat that has developed a mechanism that prevents a bike from starting if it senses that the rider doesn't have a helmet on or is inebriated.

IoT and the Indian workforce
There's no doubt that the increasing adoption of IoT will certainly have an impact on the job market in India. Some current roles will become redundant. It should, however, also create new opportunities, some of which we cannot even envision today. There will be new opportunities in traditional verticals. Software development, data management, analytics are all areas that should see strong growth as IoT adoption gains momentum. At the same time, some new hybrid verticals (like IT + Medicine) may emerge. Adjusting to changes and learning to work differently, even in traditional roles, in the connected world will be a key to success in the IoT age.

Future possibilities
In India, IoT can be the key to ensure superior consumer engagement and enhanced quality of life, whether it is in retail, utilities, healthcare or in the government sector. It can help drive up the revenue through targeted marketing and better customer service. IoT can also play a significant role in manufacturing and supply chain industries by driving costs down, improving safety of operations and quality of output. It can help eliminate human error to a large extent and provide for better execution of supply chains.

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Reliance-Jio to source cut-price 4G phones from China for Indian market

Reliance Industries is in talks with Chinese manufacturers to secure cut-price phones that could be sold in packages from $30, as it seeks to repeat the low-cost revolution it unleashed with its first dip into India's mobile market more than a decade ago.

Industry and company sources said Reliance, which aims to roll out India's first national 4G service in the coming months, has been talking to groups including Gionee, Huawei and Xiaomi, as Chinese firms also seek a platfor ..

"(Jio) will go for the kill from the start," said Neil Shah, research director at Counterpoint Technology Market Research.

"They definitely want to go for mass market play with 4G, because only that will give them the scale to be profitable."

Reliance's return to telecoms could be a game-changer in India, where only one in 10 people currently use smartphones but with a population of 1.3 billion where the majority of people already access the Internet through mobiles.

Internet users are expected to almost triple to more than 550 million by 2018, according to the Boston Consultancy Group: more than the population of Western Europe.

If successful, it will also mark a key personal victory for Mukesh Ambani, Reliance's chairman. With Reliance Jio, India's second-richest man will be returning to telecoms for the first time since he and brother Anil split the family business after a bitter feud, with Mukesh ceding the telecoms arm.

Anil's Reliance Communications said last year it would also offer 4G from 2015, pitting the two head-to-head for the first time since a non-compete agreement ended in 2010.

Attracting consumers with cheap phones is a strategy used before by Reliance, whose founder, patriarch Dhirubhai Ambani, once vowed to make phone calls "cheaper than a postcard".

In 2003, Reliance revolutionised India's nascent mobile market by offering phones to consumers for as little as $11, making handset affordable for most Indians and capturing a million customers in 10 days.

Reliance wants to repeat the feat with 4G, thanks to China's cheap smartphones but also tablets and pocket routers. 

"Their internal target is to have 5 million customers in 50 hours," a person familiar with the matter said.

Reuters spoke to officials at three different Chinese smartphone vendors who confirmed discussions with Reliance. They spoke on condition of anonymity since discussions were ongoing. 

"Reliance Jio is actively working with all major handset device manufacturers to ensure and certify their phones for use on Jio network and shall ensure adequate availability of phones in entire price range," the company said in a statement.

It gave no details.

While the company is unlikely to subsidise devices directly, industry sources say it could lure customers with an upfront payment of 2,000 to 3,000 rupees, or roughly $30 to $45, by buying a customer's existing handset and bundling Jio services.

"Right now their entire focus is to reduce the entry point for the customer," said Pankaj Agrawal, director at telecoms advisory firm Capitel Partners.

That matters for Reliance but also for the Indian government's digital push and for the e-commerce industry, which is counting on widespread adoption of high-speed Internet among smartphone users in semi-urban and rural India to grow. 

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