Reliance Jio Media, a subsidiary of Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio Infocomm has applied for a pan India cable television multi system operator (MSO) license, in a bid to foray into cable distribution, reports IndianTelevision.com.
The report also mentioned that around 200 MSOs have lined up to phase III of the digital addressable system (DAS) license at present and the number may go up by another 70-80 applicants. At least 50% of these applicants are expected to get clearances by March 2015. With this Reliance will be going up against other established cable providers such as Hathway, Siti Cable, IN cable, DEN and others.
Note that Reliance Jio Infocomm is the only company to have a pan-India Broadband WirlessAccess spectrum that can be used for 4G services and there are only about eight months for the the BWA rollout obligations to kick in.
Earlier in December Reliance Jio launched a preview site which was live for a short period and provided some information about the company’s broadband tariffs, digital bundles and connectivity bundles. The offers include a fibre-to-home connection which aims to provide 100 mbps and a usage limit of 100 gb. Reliance Industries had earlier mentioned that it is rolling-out high speed internet services via optical fibre (FTTX) in over 900 cities/towns in the country along with piloting Wi-Fi hotspots in eight locations at Ahmedabad and nine locations at Baroda and Surat.
Reliance Industries had announced that it will launch commercial 4G telecom service of Reliance Jio in 2015 entailing investment of Rs 70,000 crore. It will initially cover about 5,000 towns and cities accounting for over 90 per cent of urban India, as well as over 215,000 villages in India.
It’s also worth noting that earlier this week Sandip Das stepped down as the managing director of Reliance Jio.
Other Digital services
Reliance Jio will also be providing several digital services including:
– Music streaming service Jio Beats.
– Live TV & catch-up TV service Jio Play. We also spotted a login page for Jio Play, however it doesn’t provide any options for users to signup for the service at the moment.
– Video on demand service Jio On-demand.
– Online newspaper service Jio News that claims to allow users read hundreds of traditional newspapers across different languages and editions.
– Online magazine service Jio Mags.
– Voice & video calling app Jio Social.
– A friends locator app Jio Friends.
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