Reliance JioInfocomm (RJIL), the only pan-India license holder of 4G wireless broadband services is planning to introduce services whose connectivity speed is far greater than what existing networks can offer. According to the company, the speeds that RJIL can offer are nearly 10-12 times faster as compared to current 3G networks.
According to a source in the company, the speeds achieved are nothing short of stunning. They are achieving a speed of 49 megabit per second downlink (download), and uplink is between 8-9 mbps. Theoretically, using the current setup, RJIL can achieve speeds of 112 mbps downlink. At a speed of 49 megabits, a user can download an average movie (About 600mb) in less than two minutes.
MukeshAmbani, the Chairman and MD of Reliance Industries Limited, (RIL) has long held an interest in the telecom industry. His company RJIL is the only one who has a nationwide 4G spectrum. It holds large chunk 20 megahertz in one frequency band known as wireless broadband access (BWA) spectrum. It has been allocated 2.2 crore numbers to start its services. In addition, the company is running trials of phone and TV services that it aims to offer through its 4G network. The telecom major will also provide outdoor customer premise equipment (CPE) that will connect to its mobile tower.
A RJIL official was quoted as saying, “There will be wire which will run into house of customers from this CPE that can be connected to various devices and create a local Wi-Fi network for people to access broadband. There will be a set-top-box that we will provide which will facilitate both broadband and television services.”
4G is a revolutionary network. With this, doors of many avenues that weren’t open due to technical difficulties have now been opened. One such is Television. The set-top-box that will provide television services has been developed on Google’s Android platform – the most widely used mobile platform in India. In case of homes who don’t get a good enough signal for wireless viewing, RJIL has a contingency plan – it plans to set up an optical fiber network. Over 150 channels have already been signed up for the same and the telecom company will provide across all devices ranging from mobile phone to TV sets using its high speed 4G network.
The RJIL spokesperson further commented, “We have almost all leading TV channels across all genres from leading houses- Sony, Zee, TV18, Star and others. This is trial phase and we will add more channels as we get ready for commercial launch.” He said its TV service will have a ‘Catch UP’ feature that will allow users to see programmes of the past 7 days. “We have our data centre ready which will automatically store this content.”
TV in India is a big industry. The number of cable TV subscribers is 9.6 crore, while, the number of DTH subscribers is 5.45 crores. Market analysts predict that 4G based ‘Jio Television’ could possibly serve as another platform to view TV on for Indian viewers.