Reliance Jio has become “the digital gateway of India”, Mukesh Ambani claimed yesterday as he outlined an ambitious program of digital developments that aim to cement that position by upgrading the online experience of households and transforming those of businesses.

Speaking at the Reliance Industries AGM, chairman and MD Ambani said that Jio continues to sign up new customers at the rate of 10m a month and added that a total of 500m was within reach (it currently has 340m users).

He also reported that the business is “ready to kickstart four more engines of connectivity revenue” in addition to the one – mobile broadband – it has already activated:
  • Home broadband: the JioFiber fixed-line broadband service has been trialled in 500,000 homes and will now be rolled out to 20 million residences in 1,600 towns over the next 12 months. The offer includes a Jio set-top box that accepts broadcast cable TV signals from local cable operator partners, while premium-level customers will be able to view new movies at home on the same day they are released in cinemas.
  • SME broadband: JioFiber will also be rolled out to 15 million business establishments, enabling small and medium businesses to shift from no or limited connectivity to fixed-line connectivity and access to cloud applications. 
  • Enterprise broadband: large enterprises will be able to avail themselves of the same cloud-based technologies used by their global rivals.
  • Internet of things: within two years there will be an estimated 2 billion connected IoT devices in India; Jio aims to connect at last half of them on its own IoT platform.
Central to the business offering will be the establishment of data centres across the country where Microsoft will deploy its Azure platform to support Jio’s offerings, the Times of India reported.

“We have an incredible opportunity to apply advances in technology to help organisations across India innovate and grow,” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft.

“The combination of Jio’s leading connectivity and digital solutions with Azure, Azure AI and Office 365 will bring powerful tools and platforms for compute, storage, productivity and more to millions of businesses in the country.”

Sourced from NDTV, Times of India; additional content by WARC staff