Reliance Jio on Tuesday said it has launched its wireless broadband service JioAirFiber in eight cities — Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Calcutta, Mumbai and Pune.
The telecom major said that JioAirFiber will overcome the challenges of last mile connectivity and will provide opportunity to the TV and broadband users to upgrade.
The company said that at present its optical fibre infrastructure spans over 1.5 million kilometers across India putting it in close proximity to over 200 million premises.
“Yet providing physical last mile connectivity often ends up taking a lot of time in most parts of our country. This leaves millions of potential customers without home broadband, due to the complexities and delays involved in extending optical fiber to their premises,” a statement from Jio said.
“Our extensive fiber-to-home service, JioFiber, already serves over 10 million customers…With JioAirfiber, we are expanding our addressable market to rapidly cover every home in our country with similar quality of service,” said Akash Ambani, chairman, Reliance Jio.
“JioAirFiber will enable millions of homes with world-class digital entertainment, smart home services and broadband through its solutions across education, health, surveillance and smart home,” Ambani said.
The Telegraph had earlier reported the concern among telecom companies over providing broadband services in densely populated and congested areas where laying of optical fibre cable has emerged as a major challenge. In contrast, fibre over the air technologies can be deployed with less capital expenditure and in less time.
JioAirfiber will package 550 plus digital channels, popular OTT apps, indoor WiFi service, smart home services and devices such as WiFi router, set top box and voice active remote at no additional cost.
The tariffs for JioAirFiber ranges from Rs 599 to Rs 1,199 for speeds ranging upto 30 Mbps and 100 Mbps. AirFiber Max, which will be available in select areas, have tariffs ranging between Rs 1,499 to Rs 3,999 for speeds of upto 300, 500 and 1000 Mbps.
The new offering was announced by Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani at the company's 46th annual general meeting last month.
