tech2 News Staff

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) Chairman and Managing Director, Mukesh Ambani, announced the launch of Jio's broadband internet services arm, JioFiber, at the 42nd annual general meeting of RIL. Jio has also become India's largest mobile network with 340 million subscribers.

JioFiber will begin its commercial operations from 5 September, which also happens to be the third anniversary of Reliance Jio.

In last year's AGM, Ambani had announced that Jio would be taking into consideration JioFiber internet services registrations from interested households and businesses across India. As a result, the company got registrations from 15 million homes from 1,600 towns which enabled Jio to plan to launch the services for 20 million residences and 15 million SMBs in these towns. Jio has been conducting trials of JioFiber services with 0.5 mn households and fine-tuning services based on real-time feedback. Average data use from these trial households has been 100 GB of data.

JioFiber service internet speeds and tariff plans

Ambani announced that JioFiber services would be offered internet services at speeds going from 100 Mbps all the way to 1 Gbps.

The tariff plans would begin from Rs 700 and go up to Rs 10,000 per month depending on the plans you opt for.

Everything you wanted to know about @reliancejio's #JioFiber service. Plans to be announced on 5 September. pic.twitter.com/pUyIzAACDj — Tech2 (@tech2eets) August 12, 2019

The detailed break down of the JioFiber plans will only be available on Jio.com on 5 September.

.@reliancejio #JioFiber is set to be made commercially available from 5th September’19 with a monthly starting price of Rs 700. Here are the major highlights from #RIL42ndAGM @nimsaw pic.twitter.com/hFx2RZm1xa — Tech2 (@tech2eets) August 12, 2019

JioFiber service offers

As part of the JioFiber service, customers will be eligible to get a free 4K set-top box and a landline connection. This landline connection will let you make voice calls across India on other mobile phones as well as landline numbers. The set-top box will let you make video calls, provided you have a webcam attached to your TV, to other Jio users across platform using the JioCall app.

As part of the JioFiber Welcome Offer, users who opt for annual plans will be eligible for a free HD or 4K LED TVs.

JioFiber services will also come bundled with OTT applications so that you don’t have to pay separately to access these services. As of now, we do not know which OTT services are part of this plan.

The Jio First Day First Show offer will also let Premium JioFiber customers watch movies on their TVs on the same day as their theatrical release. This feature will be available from mid-2020 onwards.

Ambani earlier announced that Reliance Jio had crossed the 340 mn subscriber mark, making it India’s largest cellular network.

Going by previous reports, Vodafone-Idea was in the lead earlier with a subscriber base of 394.8 mn as of March 2019. Airtel was a distant second at 325.1 mn and Jio was further behind at 306.7 mn. Vodafone-Idea’s subscriber count has fallen to around 325 mn, going by the latest estimates.

If confirmed, Ambani’s announcement also means that Reliance Jio is now the second-largest mobile network in the world.

Disclaimer: Reliance Industries Ltd. is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd.