News
Indian telco reportedly wants to ensure it creates a good first impression when its network goes live.
Reliance Jio Infocomm’s 4G launch could be pushed back as far as December, if a research note from Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofAML) is on the money.
The brokerage was quoted in an Economic Times report on Wednesday as saying that Reliance Jio wants to delay the launch to ensure its network is up to scratch, so it can be confident of creating a strong first impression with high-end consumers.
"Despite completing an employee soft launch in December 2015, we do not yet have visibility on the timeline on commercial launch by Jio. In our recent meetings with industry participants, we found a consistent view coming out of risks of [the] Jio launch being pushed to December 2016," BofAML said, according to the report.
Another delay would give the likes of Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, and Reliance Communications time to consolidate their positions in the market, the research note warned.
They would get "a six-to-eight-month window to fortify their respective 3G/4G networks, inch-down data tariffs, and also be in a position to slightly tweak up voice tariffs."
Reliance Jio holds a pan-Indian licence and mobile spectrum in various bands,including the 800-MHz and 1800-MHz frequencies it picked up at a cost of just over 100 billion rupees (€1.34 billion) at auction in 2015.
After indicating that services would roll out in 2015, towards the end of last year it pushed the launch back to the 2016-2017 financial year, which begins in April.
Since then it has begun offering 4G services for free to its own employees.
