Reliance Jio to offer bouquet of services at drastically lower prices: Source

Reliance Industries, which is planning to roll out high-speed broadband services, is set to intensify competition in the low-margin telecom space as it plans to offer a bouquet of services under the 4G platform at drastically lower prices, according to sources.

"Our services will not be confined to only data and voice but there will be a bouquet of services catering to everyone's need ranging from telephony to social media," the sources told reporters on the sidelines of the company's 39th annual general meeting here.

The company has already invested Rs. 18,000 crore in the telecom venture called Reliance Jio, most of which has gone into buying spectrum.

Once the services are introduced, the pricing would go down to almost 1 percent against the current levels because of host of offerings, they claimed.

The company is also unlikely to come out with the conventional handset models to offer its services but may introduce the device in the form of a smart card, they said.

Reliance Jio, formerly Infotel Broadband, holds pan-India wireless broadband spectrum which it acquired through auction in 2010. RIL later acquired Infotel Broadband and renamed it as Reliance Jio Infocomm.

The company is working with several telecom operators for these services, they said, adding, "the infra control, however, will remain with the company as we are putting up a unique infra in place."

As part of the service rollout, RIL will set up hubs in different geographies to support its broadband network, sources said, adding part of the 10,000-strong team will be deployed in these centres.

From less than 700 professionals a year back, most of them based in company's Navi Mumbai campus, the Reliance Jio team has grown rapidly to over 3,000 professionals today. It plans to take this headcount to 10,000 by next year.

Addressing the shareholders earlier in the day, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani said in the coming years, Reliance Jio's next-generation digital infra and services platform will catalyse a transformation and will embrace almost every facet of the nation's economic growth and social progress.