Mukesh Ambani's 4G In India By December?

Multiple sources on the Internet have reported that Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Limited is foraying into wireless broadband in India. This time, they want to bring another revolution by offering 4G in India. If #-Link-Snipped-##-Link-Snipped-#sources are to be believed, RIL's 4G testing in Mumbai have succeeded in getting upto 80 Mbps download and up to 20 Mbps upload speeds. These speeds are way better than what rivals are offering at 3G [7.2 Mbps].

Ambani is known to launch services at a price point that shatter the ground below rival's feet. Years ago, Ambani did it by launching cheapest calls rate anywhere in the world at just Rs. 1/minute and other had to figure out ways to stay profitable while offering competitive rates. The new players took a step further with 1 paisa/second calling rates, but Reliance was still ahead by offering free Reliance To Reliance calls.

According to #-Link-Snipped-#, Reliance last year acquired Infotel Broadband Services - a little known company operating from Punjab. The news was totally unexpected to the industry as no one thought RIL would want to venture into telecom. There are rumors in the industry that RIL is playing a billion dollar bet on the wireless 4G broadband services in India. If they do, it's going to be huge impact to his younger brother, Anil Ambani's Reliance Telecom business. We would love to watch how the brothers play the game.

The success of 4G will be determined by several factors, the price being the most influential factor. Indian markets are very sensitive to price and though India has cheaper broadband access rates, the broadband penetration in India has miles to cross before we can think of 4G. The second being availability of 4G capable devices. The smartphone market is booming in India along with the total number of subscribers. India adds about 15-20 million new subscribers every month - which is a huge market.

That said, availability of 4G in India will be a game changer for the mobile network operators. If the pricing is done right, there will be large number of early-adopters.