Rel Jio in pact with Airspan for 4G gear
Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio Infocomm has placed a bulk order for equipment with Israeli company Airspan to meet its requirement for low-powered, short-range towers to deploy 4G services, said two people familiar with the development.
The company, which ordered equipment known as small cell wireless emitting points, has also acquired a stake in Airspan, following which Mathew Oommen, president of network and global strategy and service development, joined the board of directors at Airspan in June. Additional details of the order were not known.
Reliance Jio, the newest entrant in the country's telecom business, is gearing up to start offering high-speed, broadband or 4G services, taking on rivals including Bharti Airtel and Vodafone India, amid increasing data usage by the country's mobile phone subscribers.
The company has deployed about 25,000 regular base stations on towers and hopes to have about 1 lakh sites, including small cells, by the end of the year, one of the two people said. The company is hoping for a soft launch of its services by December, although an official start date hasn't been decided but is likely by mid-2015, said the second person. A Reliance Jio spokesman declined to comment. "As a policy , we don't comment on speculative questions regarding our business matters," the spokesman said in response to a query from ET. Mails to Airspan did not elicit an immediate response.
A company vendor said Reliance Jio is now handing out orders and paying up for quicker deployment, unlike earlier, when it would negotiate and test, with no order outcome. The company is also laying optic fibre in some cities at a rapid pace.
"Work in Mumbai and Pune is particularly intense, although elsewhere there is a capacity shortage of people who can render these services because local contractors are busy with other projects," the vendor said, referring to the Central government's broadband plan, which involves laying a national optic fibre network across the country, especially in the rural areas.
According to an internal assessment, Reliance Jio will need about 5 lakh sites to offer nationwide 4G services, said another person familiar with the company's plans. However, Jio is not yet ready to invest on such a large scale until launch, he added.
Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio Infocomm has placed a bulk order for equipment with Israeli company Airspan to meet its requirement for low-powered, short-range towers to deploy 4G services, said two people familiar with the development.
The company, which ordered equipment known as small cell wireless emitting points, has also acquired a stake in Airspan, following which Mathew Oommen, president of network and global strategy and service development, joined the board of directors at Airspan in June. Additional details of the order were not known.
Reliance Jio, the newest entrant in the country's telecom business, is gearing up to start offering high-speed, broadband or 4G services, taking on rivals including Bharti Airtel and Vodafone India, amid increasing data usage by the country's mobile phone subscribers.
The company has deployed about 25,000 regular base stations on towers and hopes to have about 1 lakh sites, including small cells, by the end of the year, one of the two people said. The company is hoping for a soft launch of its services by December, although an official start date hasn't been decided but is likely by mid-2015, said the second person. A Reliance Jio spokesman declined to comment. "As a policy , we don't comment on speculative questions regarding our business matters," the spokesman said in response to a query from ET. Mails to Airspan did not elicit an immediate response.
A company vendor said Reliance Jio is now handing out orders and paying up for quicker deployment, unlike earlier, when it would negotiate and test, with no order outcome. The company is also laying optic fibre in some cities at a rapid pace.
"Work in Mumbai and Pune is particularly intense, although elsewhere there is a capacity shortage of people who can render these services because local contractors are busy with other projects," the vendor said, referring to the Central government's broadband plan, which involves laying a national optic fibre network across the country, especially in the rural areas.
According to an internal assessment, Reliance Jio will need about 5 lakh sites to offer nationwide 4G services, said another person familiar with the company's plans. However, Jio is not yet ready to invest on such a large scale until launch, he added.
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