Ready. Steady. Steady. Steady...!
TModerate he greenfield 4G behemoth was understood to be readying for a softlaunch of its commercial services at the time of writing this article, nearly six years after it secured the rights to roll out broadband wireless access (BWA) services via a 95 percent stake in Infotel Broadband. In spite of the fact that Reliance Industries-backed service provider is understood to have installed as many as 1.2 lakh LTE cell sites, it is making sure all network issues are smoothened out it does a formal commercial launch. This hyper caution seems to be driven by a consciousness that a ‘monsoon hungama’ approach would be unsuited in a market that is highly competitive and serves customers who attach much value to quality-ofservice and user experience. These attributes gain even more significance, given that RJio’s bet is to offer differentiated and high-definition voice, data and video services.
RJio signals are already active across various circles, especially in the key cities. SIM cards have also reportedly been shipped to many RJio outlets and the stage is all set for at least a soft launch by the end of April 2016.
The service provider continues to be far ahead of any competitor in terms of 4G-ready spectrum capacity, even though Airtel would potentially surpass it in terms of overall spectrum capacity, thanks to the announcements that it would buy out Videocon Telecom’s entire spectrum assets and also the 4G spectrum assets of Aircel. It also is the only service provider to have deployable 4G spectrum across three frequency bands of 2300 MHz, 1800 MHz and 800 MHz in five telecom service areas. Also, it has spectrum assets in two frequency bands across 14 circles.
Currently, RJio’s supremacy is being challenged by incumbents, who have used the opportunity that came in the form of RJio delays to cover much of the 4G ground. However, one major factor could still tilt things heavily in favour of RJio – the pan-India scale spectrum sharing effect with Reliance Communications.
The recent changes in policy have enabled RCom to potentially liberalize its 800 MHz spectrum for sharing deals, by paying up the required amount to the government. Once that is done, the spectrum sharing deal that is already in place between RJio and RCom would suddenly open up massive capacities for the duo (particularly RJio) and give them a huge edge over the competition. MP HP J&K
RJio’s 4G spectrum assets
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