Reliance Jio to double network in coming months, subscriber cross 108 mn

New telecom operator Reliance Jio plans to double its network size by adding one lakh additional mobile sites in coming months.

The company said that in terms of data usage it "has become the largest network globally" and plans to add one lakh mobile sites in coming months to double the network size.

"Jio continues its rapid ramp-up of subscriber base and as of March 31, 2017, there were 108.9 million subscribers on the network," Reliance Jio said in a statement.

With more than 110 crore gigabyte of data traffic per month and 220 crore voice and video minutes a day, "Jio has become the largest network globally" in terms of data carried and contributed to India becoming the leading country in the world for mobile data usage.

"Jio users are today consuming nearly as much data as on all the mobile networks in the US and 50 per cent more data than mobile networks in China in a clear indication that India will adopt digitisation and Digital Life faster than anyone else in the world," the statement said.

The Mukesh Ambani-led telecom firm said that it is has built a future ready network which can easily deploy 5G.

"As per Trai MySpeed Portal, Jio's average download speed at 15.0 Mbps in March 2017 is almost twice of any other operator...Jio has the world's largest greenfield 4G LTE wireless broadband network, with over 100,000 mobile towers. And it will add another 100,000 towers to the network in the coming months," the statement said.

Besides, Jio has been expanding its fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) business offering with beta trials initiated in a few locations.

"It would expand the scope of the beta trials over the next few months," the statement said.

The company launched its 4G service commercially on September 5, 2016 for free and crossed 50 million subscribers in just 83 days, and 100 million in 170 days, adding at an average rate of 6 lakh subscribers per day.

The company started charging for mobile services from April 1 where it is also offering a scheme, Jio Prime'.

Jio subscribers opting for Jio Prime are required to pay one-time plan fee of Rs 99 and then choose monthly rental plan starting 303. The company introduced another plan with monthly rental starting Rs 309 for Jio Prime members.