Reliance Jio has connected approximately 1 million homes with JioFiber services until March 2020, the company said in its annual report for the financial year 2019-2020.
According to Jio, with sub-optimal wireline infrastructure and a meagre 7% penetration in terms of households, India has, for long, been a laggard in fixed broadband services. The company said fibre penetration in low single-digits was significantly lower than global benchmarks.
Meanwhile, Jio is treating Fiber to the Home (FTTH) services as a huge greenfield opportunity to potentially connect 50 million homes and 15 million enterprises with high-speed fibre, across 1,600 cities.
Jio’s extensive intracity fibre network, last-mile execution, seamless customer experience along with attractive bundling of digital content and smart home IoT solutions would be the key differentiators, the company said in its annual report.
Off late, Reliance Industries (RIL), through its Jio Platforms, has been raising capital from marquee investors and technology companies to build Jio into a technology platform, while becoming a zero net debt company by March 2021.
The company raised a total of Rs 1,15,693 crore through 11 deals in the last two months by selling 24.7% stake to technology giants like Facebook and several big private equity investors and sovereign wealth funds, which include Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic, KKR, ADIA, TPG.
RIL’s net debt currently stands at Rs 1.6 lakh crore and the company has also raised `53,124 crore from a rights issue.
Jio Platforms is a wholly-owned subsidiary of RIL, focusing on next-generation technologies and the chief company under its umbrella is Reliance Jio Infocomm, which has 388 million mobile subscribers.
RIL will be holding its annual general meeting (AGM) on July 15 through video conferencing for the first time.
