Mumbai, July 1: Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) is likely to roll out its 4G telecom services in 2013-14 as the Mukesh Ambani-led conglomerate has decided to set up infrastructure for its broadband venture from scratch.
RIL has been tightlipped about the launch date of its 4G service ever since it bagged the licences for 22 circles for broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum in late 2010 by acquiring a 95 per cent stake in Infotel Broadband Services (P) Ltd for Rs 4,800 crore.
4G services will offer high-speed Internet browsing and data downloads at speeds up to 100GB.
For several months, it was widely speculated that RIL would launch its broadband services — that would mark RIL’s return to the telecom arena — by mid-2012.
Soon after, news spilled about RIL’s decision to put up towers and an optic fibre network on its own. Vendors and the market have pushed backed their expectations of a rollout of the only pan-Indian 4G rollout till April 2013.
Sources say RIL is beavering away to put up towers across the length and breadth of the country and laying a nationwide optic fibre network that will take at least a year. Once the infrastructure is in place, RIL will slowly rollout 4G service that has never been tested over such a large geographic area.
RIL’s logic reportedly in setting up its own towers and network is based on cost considerations. The company is reportedly confident of setting up the towers at Rs 10 lakh each compared with a valuation of Rs 40 lakh per tower that has been fixed for existing infrastructure owned by leading operators.
An RIL spokesperson did not respond to a questionnaire asking the company about its proposed rollout date for the broadband venture. Neither did the company talk about the cost benefits that it will get by setting up the infrastructure on its own at a time capacity is already available for the same.
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