Mukesh Ambani announces launch of JioFiber broadband for homes, businesses at RIL’s 41st AGM

Mumbai : Reliance Industries Limited’s Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani is addressing the conglomerate’s 41st Annual General Meeting in Mumbai. The AGM is expected to see the launch of JioFiber, Reliance’s foray into the broadband services market.

At the beginning of his address, Ambani said Reliance is in its ‘golden decade’. He also announced that Reliance Jio’s customer base had grown to 215 million users from 123 million last year. Ambani said Jio had seen data usage of 240 crore GB.

“As our Golden Decade rolls on, our consumer businesses will contribute nearly as much to the overall earnings of your company as our energy and petrochemical businesses,” he said.

Reports say this year’s AGM could provide the backdrop of another significant expansion in the telecom sector for Reliance, with the launch of JioFiber, a fiber-to-home service. The commercial launch is expected to come with more information about pricing structures.

Fiber-to-home services are aimed at improving the last-mile connectivity of broadband services. Most networks operate by bringing a fiber optic cable to a hub in the building and then connecting individual customers by using conventional cables. This leads to a loss in the speed of the connections. Bringing fiber optic cables in this last mile of connectivity usually delivers dramatic improvements in the speed of connections.

RIL would be looking to leverage the launch of JioFiber, especially against the backdrop of the lower-than-expected performance of Reliance Jio announced on April 27. Jio recorded only a 1 percent increase in net profit from the previous quarter. Analysts had blamed this on the ongoing pricing war that was triggered by Jio’s entry into the market. The pricing war had taken a toll not just on Jio, but on the bottomlines of all telecom majors.

RIL had also announced a consolidated net profit of just over Rs 9,400 crore for the quarter which ended in March. Though this reflected a rise of 17 percent from the same quarter the previous year, the number had fallen short of analysts’ estimates. RIL also reported a 39 percent YoY growth in the in consolidated revenue, at Rs 1.29 lakh crore.

Bureau Report