Telecom operator Reliance Jio has begun rolling out its much awaited Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) services at select locations in 6 cities — Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Ahmedabad, Jamnagar, Surat and Vadodara. The FTTH services are expected to offer download speeds of at least 100 Mbps at affordable rates.



@iamShakirBaba The JioFiber Preview Offer has currently being launched in select areas of Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Ahmedabad,(1/2)

— JioCare (@JioCare) May 9, 2017

The service — JioFiber Preview Offer — is expected to be launched in a phased manner in other cities, according to a tweet from the company's official customer care Twitter handle @JioCare.



@iamShakirBaba Jamnagar, Surat and Vadodara. Our network is in the process of being rolled out to other cities - Asif(2/2) Close May 9, 2017

While announcing the March 2017 quarter results, Reliance Industries had said that Jio is making progress on the FTTH rollout through beta trials at a few locations. It also said that Jio has the world’s largest greenfield 4G LTE wireless broadband network with over 100,000 mobile towers, while announcing plans to add another 100,000 mobile towers over the coming months.

Reliance Jio’s website doesn’t have a mention of JioFiber or the preview offer. If the prices of Reliance Jio’s 4G services are considered, JioFiber may give existing players a run for their money.

In a bid to further grow its customer base, Reliance Jio had last week launched a plan offering customers JioFi 4G router in exchange for old data card, dongle or hotspot router.

There are two plans which customers can avail under the scheme - 1) users get a 100 percent exchange deal where they'll need to hand over their existing datacard, dongle or hotspot router at any Jio Digital store or Jio Care store and will get 4G data worth Rs 2,010 against the device exchanged.

In order to get a JioFi router, the customer has to pay Rs 1,999 and do a compulsory first recharge of Rs 408 out of which Rs 309 is for the plan, giving freebies for 84 days, the rest Rs 99 is for the Jio Prime membership.

Hence, to avail the first offer the customer has to pay Rs 1,999 minus the Rs 2,010 worth 4G data, which translates into zero cost and the device with the internet connection can be considered almost free. To avail themselves of the services, users have to pay Rs 408.

In the second plan, customers don't have to exchange their data connections. The JioFi is available at Rs 1,999 after a first mandatory recharge of Rs 408 but they get 4G data worth Rs 1,005, which comes down to an effective cost of Rs 994, Rs 1,999 minus Rs 1,005.

(Disclosure: Reliance Industries, which owns Reliance Jio, also owns Network18, which publishes Moneycontrol.com.)