Reliance Jio Tests Your Patience - No Launch Date In Sight

The Bank of America - Merrill Lynch, in a note to its clients has said that the commercial launch of the much awaited Reliance Jio's 4G services may be pushed to December 2016. Reliance Jio may delay the launch of their services until they're absolutely confident of creating a very good first impression among its early customers in terms of overall quality of service and customer experience.

This certainly ain't a news many people want to hear. Reliance Jio 4G services were expected to launch by December 2015; but the launch got pushed to March 2016. The delay may make the game more difficult for Reliance to gain top-end consumers from rivals like Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular.


The initial target audience for Reliance is about 40 million top end users all over India who use single SIM phones. These consumers may not port to Reliance just to test their network. IIFL Institutional Equities is also expecting Jionet's launched around December this year. The major cause of the delay is likely to be the MTS takeover by Anil Ambani's RCom with which Reliance Jio has an agreement to share 850 MHz airwaves, all over India. The takeover is currently awaiting approval from the DoT. Unless RCom gets the approval, it won't be able to share the license with Reliance Jio.

This delay is likely to give more room for expansion to Airtel, Vodafone and Idea. The existing players will not only strengthen their networks but also bring down data tariffs. The top consumers of these networks are less likely to move to Reliance if they get high quality services. So far, most of the 4G consumers have been expecting disruptive pricing from Reliance Jio; which was expected to launch its services in this month.

We certainly find this news disappointing. What about you?

Source: Reliance Jio’s 4G launch may be pushed to December - The Economic Times