Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (popularly known as Jio), is a mobile network operator in the country. It is owned by Reliance Industries, headquartered in Mumbai. Jio provides 4G LTE services and is the only VoLTE (Voice over LTE) service provider in India.
The service, which was launched for all users on September 5, 2016, with a ‘Welcome Offer,’ was originally introduced in beta for only Reliance employees on December 27, 2015, to mark the 83rd birth anniversary of Dhirubhai Ambani, founder of Reliance Industries.
Founder of Jio
Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani is an Indian billionaire business magnate, and the chairman, managing director, and largest shareholder of Reliance Industries Ltd., a Fortune Global 500 company and India’s most valuable company by market value.
What’s the new talk about Jio?
The country’s largest operator, Jio has urged telecom regulator TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) to work out mandatorily on the periodic spectrum auctions to ensure that telecom operators do not have to meet their network requirements.
The Mukesh Ambani-led firm had in September too written to Telecom Secretary Anshu Prakash questioning the Department of Telecom’s rationale to pause the policy of annual spectrum auctions and said the sale of airwaves should be held at the earliest to meet the demand for data services.
“We submit that mobile broadband is now ubiquitous, however, the exponential growth of demand has now started to impact broadband speeds.
“The only way to avoid this and ensure that the mobile the mobile broadband speeds are comparable to equally large or comparable economies is by putting more spectrum in the hands of the operators,” Jio commented on Trai’s paper.
What’s the news about SpaceX and Jio?
Elon Musk -SpaceX also has shown interest in promoting broadband in India and pushed for users to have better connectivity.
According to Jio, a spectrum worth Rs 3.92 lakh crore is lying unused with the DoT for auction.
Spectrum auctions in India were held every year between 2012 to 2016. No auctions have been held in the last four years.
“We humbly submit that Authority should ensure that this situation is not allowed to repeat again and it should propose a long-term spectrum auction schedule with periodic auctions at pre-determined intervals. This schedule should be mandatorily followed, no matter the demand or results in the previous auction. As unsold spectrum is still better than unauctioned spectrum which benefits no one,” Jio said.
SpaceX, in its suggestion to Trai, too flagged the issue of taxes and other administrative burdens on companies hindering affordable broadband.
“… the unintended fees, taxes, and other administrative burdens that, when passed on to end-users, can make broadband unaffordable to many,” SpaceX Vice President for Satellite Government Affairs Patricia Cooper said.
