Reliance Jio to launch 4G services later this year: Mukesh Ambani

Reliance chairman says the launch will happen in the second half of 2016; 80% of India's population to have high-speed mobile internet

Mukesh Ambani on Sunday said Reliance Jio would be ready to commercially launch its much talked about the fourth generation (4G) telecom services in second half of 2016, offering 80 per cent of Indians high-speed mobile internet, as well as voice services.

Reliance Jio had in late December unveiled a 4G service for its employees, marking Ambani’s return to the telecom sector years after Reliance Group's telecom unit had gone to his younger brother, Anil, following a split between the two siblings. “We'll be ready to launch in the second half of 2016. Eighty per cent of India’s population will have high-speed, mobile broadband internet. So, 80 per cent of the 1.3 billion Indians will have high-speed, mobile internet. And 2017, we would cover 90 per cent. By 2018, all of India would be covered by this digital infrastructure,” he told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in an interview.

Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (R-Jio)'s 4G services are currently available to roughly 120,000 employees, their families and business partners.

The firm, a unit of Reliance Industries Ltd, has invested close to USD 15 billion in the telecom venture so far. R-Jio holds the highest amount of liberalised (free to use for any service) spectrum among telecom operators, totalling 51.1 MHz across the 800 MHz, 1,800 MHz and 2,300 MHz bands.

Zakaria travelled from New York to Mumbai to meet Ambani at his residence — Antilia. He is the only person to have interviewed Ambani twice.

Asked about Reliance's massive investment in acquiring airwaves and laying physical infrastructure for offering high-speed internet services, Ambani said he believed that humanity is at the doorstep of massive change, and "we're just at the beginning of the information and the digital age." "And in the next 20 years, in a network society, we are going to have change much more than what we have seen in the last hundred years," he said.

Ambani said digitisation will be at the forefront of the digital revolution and India cannot be left behind.

"As we saw in the year 2012-13, India is 150th in the world in mobile broadband penetration as well as quality. And Jio has really been conceived to change this position," he said.

Citing the example of US, where 4G services were launched five years ago, he said major carriers today cover only 75 to 80 per cent of the market. "And we would be pretty much doing that in 2016 itself," he said.

RIL chairman and managing director said digital infrastructure is a very good investment.

"For me personally, we made this investment just to make sure that the youth of India, which is still the bulk of India -- India, as you know, is a very young country -- is empowered, and they have an equal opportunity to not only prosper themselves, but to contribute to this new world.

"And that was really a main reason. And that's why we took very high risks," he said.

The investment with time "now looks like being pretty good even business-wise," he added.