Jio-Samsung partnered to cover 99% of Indian population with 4G network

NewsBharati    27-Feb-2018
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Mumbai, February 27: Reliance Jio has partnered with Samsung to bring 4G LTE connectivity to 99% of the population in the country. The partnership will also work towards deploying a nationwide cellular network Internet of Things (IoT).

The network will help consumers and enterprises remotely control vehicle tracking, smart appliances, security and surveillance, paving the way for fully Digital India.

“We are deploying around 8,000 to 10,000 towers every month,” said Reliance Jio Infocomm President Jyotindra Thacker.

He is hopeful that by September or October (Diwali), the company would reach a coverage of 99 percent. At present, the company has a subscriber base of 160 million paid customers.

Reliance Jio Tareq Amin Senior VP Technology Tareq Amin said “We talked about acquiring 100 million customers in 170 days last year, which was unprecedented. People really doubted our ability to convert from free to paid customers. Not only have we converted that, we have largest migration of free to paid services in history. Our network today has 160 million paid subscribers in less than 16 months of operation.”

On being asked about as how much time Jio would take to roll out IoT, Amin said, the company needs to create an entire ecosystem for that. Rather than of doing city-by-city launch, we would launch IoT always pan India. We are not waiting for network readiness, but we are awaiting maturity of the IoT platform, he said.

Amin further said the Jio’s network would surpass 2G coverage. Our coverage in LTE would surpass 2G coverage. “We want to connect every person and every village,” Mr. Amin added.

“India ranked 154th in the world in mobile internet penetration and today it is number one in the data consumption. We believe that today we have the largest data consumption network in the world and largest video consumption network in the world,” said Amin at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018.