Reliance Jio has over 1.5 million users

On Friday (July 15th,2016), Reliance Industries (RIL) said that its telecom arm, Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJIL), has over 1.5 million test users on its network, and the trial programme will gradually be upgraded into commercial operations in the coming months.

“During the quarter (ended June 30), RJIL extended its trial services to all LYF devices users under the Jio LYF Preview Offer. This has enabled testing of all the services to customers outside the initial set of test users,” RIL said in a statement Friday, as part of its first quarter earnings announcement.

It said that the feedback had been encouraging, with all the digital applications tested extensively as part of this program.

RIL added that the average monthly consumption per user on the Jio network is in excess of 26 GB and is increasing rapidly. Average voice usage per month is over 355 minutes.

Jio has just expanded its three-month unlimited data preview offer to Samsung smartphone users in India. Users of certain Samsung smartphones are being offered free unlimited 4G data and 4,500 minutes of voice calls, unlimited video calls and SMS and Jio Premium apps during the period. This is similar to the plan offered only to users of Reliance Retail’s Lyf-branded smartphones.

JIO SPECTRUM HOLDINGS

Reliance Jio currently has total liberalised spectrum holdings of 846.10 MHz, including 440.0 MHz in the 2300 MHz band (one block of 20 MHz in all 22 circles), 213.60 MHz in the 1800 MHz band (blocks ranging from 2×3 MHz to 2×10 MHz in 18 circles) and 192.50 MHz in the 800 MHz band (blocks ranging from 2×2.5 MHz to 2×5 MHz in all 22 circles, including spectrum acquired from RCom across 13 circles.

All of this spectrum is liberalised and can be used for rolling out any technology, the company said.

Jio earlier entered into agreement with RCOM for sharing of spectrum in the 800 MHz band across 21 circles. “Only RJIL is using sub-GHz spectrum band for LTE services in the country today. The combined spectrum footprint across frequency bands provides significant network capacity and deep in-building coverage for RJIL. RJIL is also creating a multi-terabit capacity international network,” the company said.

In the last quarter, Jio had joined some of the leading global telecom operators like China Unicom, China Mobile, China Telecom, Singtel, T-Mobile US, Telefonica and Axiata Group for an initiative for a universal Rich Communications Services (RCS) profile worldwide.

RJIL has retained its credit ratings of “AAA (SO)/ Stable” by CRISIL and “CARE AAA (SO)” by CARE for series PPD 1 and series PPD 2 and “CRISIL AAA/ Stable” by CRISIL and “ICRA AAA/ Stable” by ICRA Limited for all other series, according to the official statement.

© ET Telecom