It’s been a remarkable journey for Reliance Jio since its launch three years back. Jio is now India’s largest telecom company in terms of revenue and profit. Subscriber base has hit 340 million and the company believes that 500 million is well within its grasp. The roadmap ahead is promising too with Chairman Mukesh Ambani talking about getting in financial and strategic investors in a few quarters now and a listing in the next five years.

At the Reliance Industries annual general meeting (AGM) on Monday, Mukesh Ambani announced the commercial launch of its fiber to the home (FTTH) JioFiber effective 5th September. Currently penetration of broadband in India is low at 8-10 percent with BSNL being the biggest player followed by Airtel broadband. Impact of Jio’s broadband offerings will go beyond impacting the existing players as it can go a long way in expanding India’s broadband market itself.

RIL has announced it will price JioFiber at a base price of Rs 700 per month going up to Rs 10,000 per month depending on the speed. The speed will range between 100 mbps to 1 gbps. Analysts say that the base pricing of Jio broadband services is in line with peers but the sweetener is in form of faster speeds, more data offering and the many content tie ups. Also the JioFiber customers who opt for annual plans which is called Jio Forever, will get an HD OR 4K LED television and a 4K set top box free. The set top box offers ultra-high definition entertainment, virtual reality content, multi-party video conferencing, voice-enabled virtual assistants, interactive gaming, home security etc. However, remember a Tata Sky or Airtel Dish will not be compatible with a Jio set top box and one will need to use cable services given by Den or Hathway which are owned by RIL.

There are also other interesting takeaways. Jio will soon offer unlimited ISD calling service from Jio landlines to the US and Canada at fixed monthly plan of Rs 500 per month. Reliance Jio will also launch its IoT platform from January 1, 2020 and aims to connect 1 billion households on the particular platform. The company also spoke about high quality video conferencing and innovative technologies like augmented and virtual reality facilities.

Jio has also announced a marque partnership with Microsoft where it will set up a network of large world-class data centres across India. The global tech giant will bring its Azure cloud platform to the table. In a boost to budding start-ups, the company has announced free connectivity and cloud infrastructure at Rs 1,500 per month for a bundle of connectivity, productivity and automation tools to a micro and small business.