Is this When Jio Fiber will Finally Launch in India?

Reliance Jio has already carved out a niche for itself where it offers ultra-affordable mobile tariffs to the customers, forcing the rivals to dole out more offers to increase the retention rate of the subscriber base. While the mobile telephony services of Jio began bearing fruits last year, the much-anticipated foray of the Mukesh Ambani-owned telco into India’s broadband sector commercially is still awaited.

The Jio Fiber FTTH broadband services, which are currently being piloted at select places, is now said to roll out across the country towards the year-end.

Jio Fiber high-speed broadband services have been available at select places since 2016, however, according to a report by Indian Express, the first full-scale launch will be centred around big metro cities including Delhi and Mumbai, followed by an expanded course into other tier-1 and tier-2 cities. So far, since the testing began, Jio has been able to grasp a user base of only 10 per cent of the net population in the serviceable cities.

Jio Fiber’s preview offer that is being conducted presently offers 100GB of monthly broadband data to the users at 100Mbps. Emulating the launch of its mobile services in India, Jio Fiber FTTH connections are free of cost in the feasible areas, however, it attracts a one-time security deposit of Rs 4,500 towards the router. According to the report, the Jio broadband router unit costs around Rs 8,000 to the company. However, the customers have only been asked to pay a little more than half that amount.

The leaked images that have been obtained by the Indian Express claim an actual Jio Fiber router unit, which is coupled with perhaps the other hotly-demanded Jio service – Jio DTH. The report mentions that Jio could be mulling to unify both the services into a single device, however, it is not known whether the full-scale launch of Jio Fiber and the introduction of Jio DTH services will coincide. As seen in the images, the Jio Fiber router has several Ethernet ports that are unlikely on a traditional set-top box, which is suggestive of some truthfulness in the simultaneous launches.

Jio Fiber router unit is likely to be an Optical Network Termination device that can be used for five different services – broadband, cable TV, landline, home automation, and home surveillance. This means that Jio could be mulling to introduce IoT services sometime in future, considering its investment towards the advancement of 5G technology in India alongside its global launch. The Jio Fiber router unit will also come with a remote control with support for voice commands, much like what Airtel offers on its Internet TV setup. – Financial Express