Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Stephen Rose
CEO Render Networks

Reliance Jio Infocomm, the telecommunications arm of Reliance Industries, is all set to begin its commercial operations by December 2015. Though we are yet to know the official launch date (for which we will get some abusive comments from our readers), there are some updates regarding Reliance Jio’s progress towards the commercial roll out.

Before Jio’s data services come to market, as early as by mid-September 2015, RIL will launch TDD-LTE handsets (mostly, Android smartphones) for everyone; ranging from Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 25,000. It will have it’s own branding – ReConnect. You can already see products from this brand at Reliance Digital stores.
Jio has tested these devices – dongles, Wi-Fi Hubs, smartphones, tablets, and other products – from 28 different OEMs. It is expected that Jio’s ReConnect smartphones will have both TDD-LTE (2300MHz) and FDD-LTE (1800MHz and 800MHz) support. I am not sure whether these smartphones would support 2G CDMA or GSM network, but I expect inbuilt support for VoLTE. Jio will rely heavily on its existing Reliance Digital platform to reach masses.
There are reports from Nokia Networks that they have made a deal with Reliance Jio. The 2-year contract, valued approx. $100 million, is for IP multimedia system (IMS) deployment that will help Jio in bringing VoLTE easily on its 4G LTE network.
Times of India has reported that Reliance Jio has started its beta launch of 4G services among Jio employees. As it seems, Jio may come up with dual LTE platform – TDD-LTE on 2300MHz and FDD-LTE on 1800MHz. FDD-LTE on 800MHz will come once the spectrum sharing deal with Reliance Communications (owned by Mukesh Ambani’s brother Anil Ambani) is cracked. Continuing the commitment with state governments, Jio has launched its free Wi-Fi ‘Jionet’ in Lucknow on the 17th of August. Earlier, Jio has launched such services in Ahmedabad, Surat, Kolkata, and other cities across the country.