Oscar-winner AR Rahman will ring in Reliance Jio’s 4G services in Mumbai on December 27 at the soft launch of the firm’s telephony services. Chairman Mukesh Ambani and his wife Nita Ambani have invited more than 25,000 employees of Reliance Industries and their families for the soft launch on that day at the Reliance corporate office in Navi Mumbai, according to people privy to the development. Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan is expected to be at the event these people said.
The launch event, which starts at 5.30 pm and will be telecast live to 1,000 locations across the country, is also intended to mark founder Dhirubhai Ambani’s birth anniversary on December 28. RJio’s commercial launch date has not yet been disclosed but according to industry sources it will happen in March-April 2016.
RJio has already given subscriptions to its telecom-to-television service on smartphones to more than 17,500 employees ahead of the launch, for them to use the services and give feedback before it rolls out services to the public early next year, these people said. The company will now extend this offer to its other employees, vendors and partners, they said.
Earlier this week, analysts at Bank of America Merill Lynch and Credit Suisse said in separate notes to investors that phone calls and data services on the network were working well.
“The network coverage was on par with incumbents — we visited shopping malls, office buildings, marketplaces, train stations. Even while travelling at high speed, the signal was good without any drops,” analysts at Credit Suisse reiterated after testing the networks. “Overall, our take away is that the RJio network is turning out to be as strong a threat to incumbents as we had feared.”
BofA-ML analysts said the telephone calls on the RJio network were working well in Mumbai both within and outside buildings, while data speeds range from 18-30 megabits per second inside buildings and 60-70 Mbps outside buildings, the analysts wrote. They added that the full commercial launch of RJio services across India could be delayed until the first quarter of next fiscal as the company wants to ensure its networks are stable and reliable.