Oil-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), in its 42nd annual general meeting, announced that the Jio GigaFiber would be commercially launched on September 5, 2019. The company has received 15 million registrations from 1,600 towns for home broadband services, said Mukesh Ambani, the chairman of RIL.

"The plan ahead for Jio GigaFiber is to reach 20 million residences and 25 million business," he said at the AGM.

Here are the key highlights

The base plan of Jio GigaFiber will start with 100 Mbps and can go up to 1000 Mbps which will be priced between Rs 700 to Rs 10,000 per month.

The company had rolled out the GigaFiber trial last year with five lakh homes with up to 100 GB a month.

At the moment Jio GigaFiber users have paid a refundable security deposit of Rs. 2,500 to Rs. 4,500 for the router but the broadband service has otherwise been free, Ambani said.

Ambani added that voice calls from home to any Indian operator, mobile or fixed, will be absolutely free forever.

The company also announced a lower fixed-line international calling with unlimited calling pack to the United States and Canada at Rs 500 per month.

Designed Jio set-top box to accept broadcast signal from local cable operators

All local cable operators will continue to have steady revenue for their broadcast TV business

The Jio set-top box supports most of the gaming controllers, including gameplay in 4K, adding that Tencent, Gameloft, Microsoft, and many other companies will have their games available in the set-top box.

Jio Fiber aims to empower 2.4 million small and medium business

The set-top box also supports mixed reality (MR) via headsets which will let the user create a 3D hologram of themselves.

The MR device, Jio HoloBoard showed during the AGM, is designed by Tesseract which Reliance acquired earlier and will be available in the market at an affordable price soon.

Jio GigaFiber plans will also come bundled with subscriptions from premium over-the-top (OTT) applications, Ambani announced during the AGM.

GigaFiber will also allow customers to enjoy 'First Day First Show' movies, along with the international market. The service, however, will be launched in the middle of 2020.

As part of the Jio Fiber Welcome Offer, Jio customers who will avail the annual plans will also get HD LED or 4K televisions and a 4K set-top box for free.

Disclosure: RIL, the promoter of Reliance Jio, also controls Network18, the parent company of CNBCTV18.com.

First Published:Aug 12, 2019 11:41 AM IST