Reliance Jio unveils 4G services at IIT Bombay event

The telecom operator who has nation-wide licence to provide 4G service showcased its forthcoming attractions at the IIT

Wireless machines that measure blood pressure and record data in the cloud so that it can be accessed remotely. Mobile phone-based urine analysis. These were some of the fourth-generation (4G) services displayed by Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio Infocomm, the only operator in India with a nationwide licence to provide such services. While 4G services are yet to be rolled out, Reliance Jio gave a sneak peek of what could be expected at Techfest, the annual science and technology festival of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) here.

Also on display were Reliance Jio’s entertainment-based services, which included an Android-based set-top box that allows users to view live high-definition TV shows without glitches and breaks. It also has a service called Catch-up TV, wherein one can watch TV shows which are seven days old.

“There is no need for recording TV shows. We store seven days of programming on our server, and a user can access it anytime (within seven days),” said an exhibitor at the company’s stall. Jio, which has been procuring entertainment-based content, has around 500 Indian movies and 2,500 episodes of Indian TV shows to be streamed and watched online.

“A user can watch half the show or movie on his or her TV, pause it and watch the rest either on a tablet or a mobile phone, using the same log-in,” said the exhibitor. The company also has a Jio Drive service, where 100 GB of storage on the cloud is offered free to subscribers. This could be used to store videos, documents and pictures, and allows for easy peer-to-peer sharing. This service is available across Windows, Mac and Android operating systems.

The operator has tied up with Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications to spruce up its infrastructure backbone. It has set up test networks of its high-speed 4G connectivity at zones and areas at the IIT campus, to give students a feel of the 4G experience. On a fibre backbone, the speeds were as high as 51 Mbps. Long-term evolution technology, through which tablets and other wireless devices were connected, had speeds of more than two Mpbs, as it was spread across multiple devices.

“This is merely to test our networks and get feedback from these young users,” said a Reliance Jio official. He added that some of the applications were developed in-house.

Reliance Jio’s pilot remote healthcare project, which is now restricted to six Reliance Foundation clinics, was also on display at Techfest.