Reliance Jio 4G Network Peaked 70 Mbps During Trials: Credit Suisse

Download speed on 4G network of Reliance Jio during its beta-test phase peaked at 70 megabit per second but remained in a range of 15-30 mbps on most occasions, according to a field trial report by brokerage firm Credit Suisse.

The report said the download speed of Reliance Jio's 4G service was impressive but "it is still an empty network". It also found urban coverage of RJio network at par with incumbents but remarked rural coverage as "poor".

"We experienced peak download speed of 70 Mbps during our trials, and on most occasions in the 15-30 Mbps range, even on the move," a report by Credit Suisse Research Analysts Sunil Tirumalai and Chunky Shah said.

At the download speed of 70 mbps, a video of the size of a Bollywood movie can be downloaded in about half a minute while at 15-30 mbps the same can be downloaded in about three minutes.

The report compared commercially launched 4G service of telecom major Airtel and beta network of Reliance Jio and found "Airtel 4G giving 10-20 Mbps, often slower than Jio, and 3G network speeds of sub 2Mbps (peak 7 Mbps)".

Analysts found urban coverage of RJio network at par with incumbents but remarked rural coverage as "poor".

During trials analysts experienced call drop-free RJio network in Mumbai but lost signal 3-4 times when they entered on village roads.

Analysts said that they experienced seamless phone call experience between RJio and network of other telecom operators.

"Overall, our take away is that the Rjio network is turning out to be as strong a threat to incumbents as we had feared. Next focus would be on pricing and marketing execution," the report said.

Reliance Jio is expected to launch 4G services this month.

Credit Suisse analysts said that the speeds will fall once a commercial launch happens and more users get on to the network but globally 4G has delivered better speed than 3G services.

The company has matched up with incumbents on coverage in urban area but there is not much rural focus.

"Until the rural network is fixed, RJio could enter into roaming agreements with other operators. We suspect Jio would use sub-1GHz spectrum for rural coverage," the report said.

Commenting on handset availability for RJio's 4G service, the report said that ZTE is making RJio's LYF branded 4G handset and some handsets of Samsung, LG, Lenovo and ZTE also supported VoLTE calls.

Source: NDTV

Reliance Jio set to replicate the success of China Mobile

Reliance Jio (RJio ), the 4G venture of Mukesh Ambani' s Reliance Industries, looks to copy the success of China Mobile as the countdown begins for the launch of the service at the end of this financial year. "We are now building another Reliance in the consumer space. Data will be the new oil for RIL ," says an executive close to Ambani.

At the end of 2014, China Mobile's customer base reached 807 million, representing a growth of 5.1 per cent from the previous year, of which 4G customers accounted for 90 million. Its voice services revenue went down by 13.1 per cent, while data services revenue shot up by 22.3 per cent. In addition, the revenue from mobile data traffic went up by 42.9 per cent. RJio is eyeing such growth in India.

"You need to have roads, cars and destinations for reaching out to people. Similarly, in the telecom space, road means infrastructure, cars are devices and the destinations are common - communication. We have the best technology and advanced infrastructure. Jio is like a mall. In that ecosystem, partners will come together and build solutions in healthcare, education, money, entertainment and cloud," says the RIL executive.

Romal Shetty, Partner and Head, Telecom Services at KPMG in India, says that for China Mobile, LTE deployment was more an upgrade of existing 3G networks than deployment of new network technology. "One of the key reasons was that China Mobile was operating its 3G networks on Time Domain Duplexing (TDD) schemes. The LTE deployments were also TD-LTE. The main rivals of China Mobile (China Unicom and China Telecom) had the challenge of deploying TD-LTE networks while their 3G networks were predominantly Frequency Domain Duplexing (FDD) based. This advantage enabled China Mobile to provide extensive LTE coverage in shorter time frames as opposed to the competition."

Rahul Agarwal, Senior Consultant, Information & Communication Technologies Practice at Frost & Sullivan says that China Mobile's success can be attributed to the fact that it has been able to provide an enhanced user experience to its subscribers on the TD-LTE network. "Speed achieved by TD-LTE is much higher than what China Mobile achieved on its TD-SCDMA network and this has been critical for engineering the turnaround. China Mobile has experienced a surge in its TD-LTE subscriber base and looks good to continue doing well," he says.

RJio bought the TD-LTE spectrum in 2010 and will be happy to replicate the success of China Mobile in India, says Agarwal. "The initial concerns are that, as compared to Frequency Division Long Term Evolution (FD-LTE), the device ecosystem for TD-LTE is not very developed and that only a small fraction of LTE devices launched by vendors globally support this technology (TD-LTE), which may no longer be relevant. Also RJio intends to launch cheap devices to ensure that this concern is taken care of," he adds.

In 2014, China Mobile promoted the transformation from voice-centric to data-centric operations. The average handset data traffic per 4G user in a month reached 780 MB. The 4G network has gradually become the major data carrying network in China. For the network, the group cumulatively deployed 720,000 4G base stations, which cover a population of more than one billion, leading to continuous nationwide coverage in almost all cities and counties as well as data hotspot coverage in developed rural towns and villages. RJio will put up 75,000 towers during the time of launch to cover around the same population, in addition to the 2,50,000 route km of optical fibre that it has laid. It plans to double the optical fibre footprint in next three years to cover its total licensed area.

China Mobile launched a series of 4G featured services including lossless music, high definition videos and high-speed games, and found out new business models such as data traffic sharing and corporate-sponsored data traffic. In addition to the networks, Ambani has drawn up a strategy for content and applications, also unlike other players. Before the end of the year, the fashion and lifestyle formats of Reliance Retail will roll out its e-commerce initiative in sync with Jio's business. Reliance's e-commerce initiative in grocery, reliancefreshdirect.com, would be scaled up to serve new markets. 'Jio Chat' will integrate chat, voice, video calling, conferencing, file sharing and photo sharing.

Another, 'Jio Drive' will bring cloud capabilities to smart phones. Using this application, anyone can store, sync and share any content between devices. Jio team buys the rights of most of the new movies to instantly available on their mobile platform. 'Jio Play', 'Jio Beats' and 'Jio Mags' are the other planned offerings. Jio has operationalised nearly half a million square feet of its own next-generation cloud data centres. It plans to have an end-to-end initial capacity to serve in excess of 100 million wireless broadband and 20 million Fibre-to-the-Home customers.

"Jio's capacity created is more than the 4G network capacity in the US. We are trying to change the life of the individual," says the RIL executive. Unlike 2G, the new telecom war will not be about network, but also about devices and content. Airtel has tied up with vendors such as Xiaomi and Lenovo for low-end devices, and Apple and Micromax for high-end devices. It has deals signed with music and movie content providers. RJio is in talks with 28 mobile and tablet manufacturers, including Apple, Samsung and Micromax. It may also sell self-branded compatible devices.

Source: Business Today

Reliance’s Jio Chat now available in nine countries

Jio Chat, the instant messaging app from Jio is now available across nine countries, including India. Customers in Canada, USA, UK, UAE, South Africa, Singapore, Australia and China can now download Jio Chat and chat with friends and family across these countries. It is available for Android and iOS devices. This app competes with popular apps such as WhatsApp, Line, WeChat and Hike in India.

In terms of features, the app supports messaging, voice calling, video chat, conferencing and audio notes. It also adds in doodles, stickers and emoticons. The app will also have location sharing along with status sharing features. The app will work over mobile data as well as Wi-Fi networks.

Contacts will be synced upon downloading the app and free SMS invites can be sent to all. Jio Chat also offers chat channels which allows users to stay updated about their favorite celebrities, brands or even news as well. Users will also find special promotions in this section. The app will also offer an offline chat option, which can be used to store typed messages after which they can be sent once the user comes online.

Sharing more details, a spokesperson of Jio Chat said, “We are excited to launch our services in eight new countries as it will help in boosting our international presence and will also let our customers based in India connect seamlessly with their loved ones abroad.”

Source: First Post

Reliance Jio begins trial, employees get services’ free run

Ahead of the launch of its mobile services, Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJIO) on Tuesday commenced the beta services of its 4G mobile services. With this the company employees will now use Jio mobile services during a trial period of two months.

According to industry sources, after successfully completing the trial run, RJIO is likely to roll out its 4G mobile services in selected circles. During the trial period RIL employees would get free unlimited data on purchase of handset, which is priced between Rs 9,000 and Rs 32,000.

In a letter written to its employees last week, the company said that the “Jio is set to enable everyone in India to live a Digital Life. As we make Jio ready for India and work towards the commercial launch, there is a special role for each one of us. We invite you today to start using Jio, and with your feedback (on quality of network) together we will ensure that Jio is ready for India. This is how we will connect the dots together with you…”.

The RIL employees can chose from a variety of new 4G VoLTE smartphones that come with the latest features such as crystal clear voice and video calling, at a special employee price, according to the letter addressed to RIL employees.

These handsets will also be made available at Digital Express stores from next week. It would also have a coupon worth Rs 13,200.

“A Jio prepaid SIM is at no cost loaded with voice, SMS, high-speed data, public Wi-Fi, and full access to Jio apps all together worth above Rs 13,800, plus additional benefits such as a power bank, extended warranty, insurance and Reliance Digital vouchers,” the letter stated.

Employees can also purchase a personal Wi-Fi device, a mobile hotspot that boosts all Wi-Fi enabled devices to 4G speeds. This will come with a Jio prepaid SIM and services such as 75 GB of data, public Wi-Fi, and full access to Jio’s apps worth above Rs 12,000.

Jio mobile users will even be able to recharge at no cost during the trial period in case they run out of voice, SMS or data.

Source: Financial Express

New technology LiFi to offer 100 times faster speed than WiFi

A new technology, known as LiFi, could one day offer internet speeds one hundred times faster than the WiFi we use today. Scientists have achieved speeds in the lab of up to 224 GB per second. That's the equivalent of downloading 18 movies in the blink of an eye. LiFi, or light fidelity, is now moving to trials in the real world, with office tests in Tallin, Estonia achieving speeds of 1 GB per second, 100 times the speed of traditional WiFi.

The world's ever­growing desire for more data at faster rates is pushing WiFi's capacity to its limits. WiFi is achieved by transmitting data through radio waves, but can only transfer so much at a time. By 2019, it is estimated that the world will be exchanging roughly 35 quintillion bytes of information each month. Because radio frequencies are already in use and heavily regulated, that data is going to struggle to find a spot in line. WiFi is simply running out of space .




Capacity is only part of the problem. WiFi is not a terribly efficient solution. The base stations responsible for transmitting radio waves only function at about 5 per cent efficiency, most of the energy being used to cool the stations. For those transmitting sensitive data, security is also a problem, as radio waves travel through solid objects such as walls and doors. Like radio waves, visible light is part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The difference is that viable light has a spectrum 10,000 times larger than radio waves.

This means LiFi has the potential for enormous capacity. Instead of transmitting information via one data stream, visible light would make it possible to transmit the same information using thousands of data streams simultaneously. LiFi works by flashing LED lights on and off at incredibly fast speeds, sending data to a receiver in binary code. It's essentially an ultra­fast version of turning your flashlight on and off to create morse code. The flashes occur so fast that they are not seen by the naked eye. All one need to do is fit a small microchip to every potential illumination device and this would then combine two basic functionalities — illumination and wireless data transmission. In In other words, the infrastructure is already there. We can use the LED bulbs we already have, with some tweaking.

Source: ET

Reliance Jio's entry seen increasing competition in telecom, lowering data tarrifs

The impending entry of Reliance Jio will increase competition in the Indian telecom sector and pressure credit profiles of the top-four telecom companies, Fitch Ratings has said.

In order to be competitive and grab chunk of the market share, Jio is likely to offer cheaper tariffs; Fitch expects that data tarrifs will fall by at least 15-20% as incumbents compete on price with Jio. Cheaper tariffs will help the company build market share and voice average revenue per user (ARPU) will decline on lower usage as rising data usage will cannibalise voice.

"We expect competition to intensify as Reliance Jio, part of Reliance Industries, enters the market with likely cheaper and faster data-focused tariff plans armed with sufficient spectrum and access to funds," said Fitch Ratings.

The agency added it expects the 2016 credit profiles of the top-four Indian telcos to come under pressure amid tougher competition, larger capex requirements and debt funded M&A.

Fitch Ratings though retained the rating outlook on the sector as ''stable''.
"We expect blended monthly ARPU to fall by 5-6% to around Rs 160 (2015: Rs 170) due to a decline in data tariffs, which will more than offset the rise in data usage," it said.
Fitch said it expects the incumbent telcos to offer discounts and promotions to higher-ARPU subscribers in anticipation of Jio's entry to prevent user attrition.

Jio is likely to launch its cheaper and faster 4G-focussed data services in Q1 of 2016 having invested about $14 billion partly to acquire 800 MHz spectrum in 10 circles and higher-bandwidth spectrum of 2300MHz/ 1800MHz in 22 circles.

It expects industry revenue to grow by low single-digits (2015: 9%), driven solely by data services as voice matures and subscriber growth slows.

"Data's contribution to revenue will rise to around 25-27% (2015: 18-20%) as data traffic will double - aided by the proliferation of cheaper smartphones, lower data tariffs and improving content availability," it said.

The top four telcos' average operating Ebitda margin will narrow by 100-200bps (2015: 35%) due to pricing pressure on the higher-margin data services and a rise in marketing spend as data competition rises, Fitch Ratings said.

The ratings agency said 2016 industry capex/revenue could rise to 19-20% (2015: 18%) as companies invest to meet the challenges of fast-growing data traffic and a new competitor in Jio. "We also expect telcos to invest to improve voice call quality," it added.

Source: First Post

First look and feel of Reliance Jio’s 4G VoLTE service with speed test

As December approaches, the anticipation of Reliance Jio’s commercial launch starts to heat up. Like every year around this time of the year subscribers become more hopeful and optimistic about the launch of an operator which has been predicted to grossly change the dynamics of the Indian telecom industry. But unlike the yesteryears this year has seen an official announcement by Jio about commercial launch at least in key markets by December 2015.

We thought it would be best to give our readers an exclusive first look at Jio 4G service running on LG Spirit LTE handset which has just been launched in India by LG through an exclusive partnership with Reliance retail. As you can see in the status bar just to the left of the network signal bars is a symbol indicating VoLTE which shows that Jio network is VoLTE capable to support HD voice quality and the phone also supports VoWifi which is another cool feature which will be deployed by Jio where an ongoing call will seamlessly switch over from LTE network outdoors to Wifi network indoors as and when it is available. VoWifi also ensures connectivity in tricky areas like offices in basements where there is no cellphone network coverage but has a wifi network setup.

As you can see in the screenshots, the download speeds ranged from 34.43 to 35.52 Mbps while the upload speeds ranged from 6.88 to 7.01 Mbps and latency ranged between 61 to 62 milliseconds. The speed test results were pretty impressive but then again at this point Jio’s towers are not crowded by subscribers and the actual picture may change after commercial launch when the contention ratio changes.

Source: Telecom Talk