Jio Company

Jio: Introduction

Jio Company, whose full name is Reliance Jio Infocom Limited, is doing business in the network and telecommunication market with its short name 'Jio' only. Jio Limited, which is headquartered in Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, operates the LTE (Long-term Evolution) network at the national level, and it is a subsidiary of Jio Platforms. This company operates its 4G LTE network by providing coverage across all 22 telecom circles of India. In its Research and Development Sector, Jio Limited company is working toward offering 5G and 6G networks in India, but currently, this company is offering only 4G and 4G+ network services in India.

Jio Soft, which is a subsidiary of Jio Limited company, launched its beta version on 27 December 2015 for its employees & business partners, and later on 5 September 2016, it became available publicly. Currently, Jio Limited is not only the largest network and telecommunication operator in India but also the third-largest in the world. The company's current customer base is more than 42.62 crore (426.2 million). For offering home broadband, telephone, and television services, Jio Limited company launched a fiber-to-home service in September 2019. In the year 2020, Reliance Industries sold off almost 33% stakes in its Jio Limited subsidiary and raised nearly ?1.65 lakh crore (USD 22 billion) by the month of September.

Jio: History

On 15 February 2007, Jio Limited company was registered as IBSL (Infotel Broadband Services Limited) in Ambawadi Tehsil of Ahmedabad, Gujarat. After three years of its foundation, more than 95% stake of the Infotel Broadband Services Limited company was bought by RIL (Reliance Industries Limited) in the year 2010 for INR 4800 Cr (which is equivalent to INR 91 billion or USD 1.2 Billion as in 2020). Even though ISBL was not a listed company, it was the only company in the 4G auctions that took place early in 2010 that managed to win broadband spectrum in all 22 telecom circles of India. Infotel Broadband Services Limited later continued as a subsidiary of the Reliance Industries Limited till the end of 2012, but in January 2013, as a part of strategic planning of Reliance Industries Limited to capture the maximum customers from the network and telecommunication market, this subsidiary was renamed as Reliance Jio Limited. Two years after the renaming of the company to Reliance Jio Limited, in June 2015, this company announced that it would be commencing its operations by the end of the year. But there were many obstacles and other problems in the company's way, which led them to postpone the commencing of their operations to the first quarter of the financial year (FY) 2017, i.e., 2016-17.

In the year 2015, an NGO (Non-government Organization) known as the Centre for Public Interest Litigation filed a PIL (Public Interest Litigation) in June in the apex court of India, Supreme Court of India, with the help of Prashant Bhushan. Through this PIL, the NGO was trying to challenge the decision of the Government of India as to how they have granted the PAN-India license for network and telecommunication to Jio Limited. Through this PIL, the NGO also alleged that the company or the firm was being allowed by the Government of India to provide 4G data services along with the voice telephony to its customers. The exact allegations in PIL were mentioned that the Government of India was only paid an additional fee of USD 22 million (INR 166 crore Approx) for providing the voice telephony services along with the 4G data services. According to this allegation, the Government of India had contributed to the loss of USD 300 million (approx INR 2284 Crores) by charging such an unreasonable, arbitrary, and very less fee to the company. However, the Indian DoT (Department of Telecommunication) had explained in the court that BWA winners were not restricted from providing the voice telephony services as per the rules for BWA and 3G spectrum. As a result of this explanation from the Indian DoT in the court, the accusations in the court were dismissed, and the PIL filed by the NGO was revoked.

The company launched the 4G data and calling network and telecommunication services internally for its organization and as the plan for the final testing phase on December 27, 2015. After three quarters of launching the services internally in the organization, Jio Limited finally launched the 4G services commercially on September 5, 2016. When Reliance Jio launched its network and telecommunication services commercially in the market, it offered free data and calling services for more than 6 months (till 31st March 2017) for all its users. This was part of the strategy of the company to attract a maximum number of users from the market and make a strong presence in the market from the very first day of the launch. As part of the plan, the company, during their official launch event, announced that they would be offering free data and calling services to all the users till the end of the year (31st December 2016), but later, to attract more customer base, the company extended the offer till one more quarter, i.e., 31st March 2017. This plan got so successful, and the company was able to attract more than 16 million users from the Indian market within the first month of its launch. The company's success further continued after the launch, and it easily managed to cross the mark of 50 million (5 crores) subscribers in just 83 days. The company also managed to cross the mark of 100 million (10 crores) subscribers very easily in the Indian market on February 22, 2017. As per the latest data, the company is speedily moving towards reaching the goal of crossing 200 million subscribers in the Indian market.

Jio Limited: Products and Services Offered

Reliance Jio Limited company is one of the biggest companies in India in today's time, which has not launched its IPO yet. Even without offering an IPO in the share market, the company portfolio is very large and is one of the most preferred companies by investors and big corporates. Many big names from the investment corporates are very much interested in buying shares in Jio Limited company because of the strong presence and hold of the company in the Indian telecommunication and network market. One of the biggest reasons behind the company's strong presence and hold in the Indian telecommunication and network market is the various products and services offered by the company. When the company launched in the market, it was only offering 4G data and calling services to its users, but now the company has increased its services list and offers multiple types of products to its customers. These multiple types of products and services offered by a company not only make a strong impact on the existing customers but also attract various new customers. Following is the list of some most popular products and services offered by Jio Limited company with a brief description of each of them:

(1) Mobile Broadband:

Mobile broadband was the first service that was offered by the Jio Limited company to its customers. The company wanted to launch its 4G data and calling in December 2015, but due to multiple reasons and factors, this launch was slated from the originally planned date and later launched in September 2016. Jio Limited company offers Mobile broadband services and provides a fourth-generation (4G) network with both data and calling services. Along with these basic 4G data and calling services, the company also offered various peripheral services like online music and video streaming, live TV, instant messaging, and many others.

(2) JioFiber:

Jio Limited company started to test a new triple-play fiber to the home service, which was popularly called Jio GigaFiber (tentatively named at that time), in August 2018. This Jio GigaFiber service, which is currently known as JioFiber popularly, offered high-speed broadband internet services with internet speeds ranging from 100 to 1000 Mbit/s, as well as telephone landline and television services.

Exactly one year after the launch of JioFiber services, in August 2019, the company officially announced that the JioFiber services would be launched officially for all their customers on September 5, 2019. The company chose this date to launch the JioFiber services as it was a very auspicious occasion for the Jio Limited company (The third anniversary of the company). Apart from this, the company also announced multiple plans in which they were offering their JioFiber customers an option to stream the latest movies and films which are still in theatre ("First Day First Show").

In 2015, when Jio was planning to launch the network and telecommunications services for Indian customers, the company had a network of more than 160,000 miles (250,000 KM) of fiber optic cables in the country. With the power of this huge optical cables network, the company planned that it would also partner with the local cable operators so that they could get the broader connectivity and maximum reach for their broadband services.

(3) Jio Business:

Even before the official launch of Jio Limited company in the Indian market, it was always clear that Jio would always launch a network and connectivity-related solutions on which the company would expand its business. Following its plan to expand the company's business in the Indian network and telecommunications (connectivity) market, Jio Limited launched multiple connectivity solutions for its customers. These connectivity solutions offered by the company has designed to focus on the business-class customers from the Indian markets primarily, and these have solutions products as the businesses bundled with services provided by Jio Platforms, Reliance Retail, and Office 365.

Many Popular Jio Branded Devices

Jio Limited is a company that has been diversifying itself into many fields and businesses since its launch in September 2016. The company never had a plan to keep itself limited to the telecommunications and network market as a connectivity service provider. From the very beginning days of this company, it was always seen that the company had big plans to diversify itself into many sectors and expand its business. Under these plans and strategies of the company, Jio Limited has launched many devices like feature mobile phones, smartphones, and many other devices, under the brand name Jio. Because of the very low cost of these devices offered by the company, they got very popular in the Indian market in a very short span of time. Talking about devices, the most popular devices launched by the company was JioPhone and other mobile phones. Following is a brief description of the mobile phone devices launched by the company in the Indian market in the past few years:

(1) JioPhone:

The company launched a line of feature phones under their brand name Jio and named this product JioPhone with the tagline of 'Cheapest Feature Phone in the Indian market.' The company released the first model of the feature phone under this segment of JioPhone in August 2017, and pre-ordering for this JioPhone began for all the people on 24 August 2017 on a first-come, first-serve basis. This phone also came with a revolution in the market as this was the first LTE-compatible feature phone launched by any mobile phone maker in the Indian market. Other than this, one more thing which attracted most of the customers was the price of this phone which was only INR 1500 initially, and later, this phone was also offered for INR 500 only. The features of this phone were very powerful in the price range this phone was offered. Following are some listed and stand-out features of the first JioPhone launched by the company:

• In-built with a Jio-branded application store
• Near-field communication support (first in any feature phone)
• A complete suite of Jio Apps is in-built into the phone, including the Jio voice assistant HelloJio
• A dual-core processor (first in any feature phone)
• 4GB of ROM (Read Only Memory) or internal storage (highest in any feature phone)
• Based on the KaiOS platform (a type of smartphone OS which is derived from the defunct Firefox OS)
• and it also included a 2.4-inch display

Apart from all the features listed above, this JioPhone also had an in-built feature of "TV cable" through which this phone supports the users by which they can connect the TV cable accessory for output to an external display.

(2) JioPhone 2:

The JioPhone 2 was the next feature phone under the brand name 'Jio', which was unveiled by the company in July 2018, and this could be considered an upgraded version of the first JioPhone launched by the company in the previous year. JioPhone was also a feature phone supporting LTE network and telecommunications, but it was an updated model in the Keyboard bar as it offered a horizontal display and a QWERTY keyboard. During the launch event of this JioPhone 2, the company also announced that applications like WhatsApp, Facebook, and YouTube, would be available and supported by both models of JioPhone. The company also announced that it would release an OTA update for all the existing JioPhone users so that they could also have support for all these applications on their mobile phones.

(3) JioPhone Next:

JioPhone Next, as the name suggests, is the fully-upgraded version of the two JioPhone launched by the company, and this phone was announced by Mukesh Ambani on 24 June 2021. Launched in June 2021, JioPhone Next is the first fully-featured smartphone of the company, and it was built on the Pragati OS (an operating system based on Android Go Operating System). This smartphone launched by the company is classified under the entry-level smartphone in the electronics market, and it was co-developed with Google as part of its long-term partnership. Four months after the announcement of JioPhone Next, this smartphone was finally launched in the Indian market on November 4, 2021.