At its 41st Annual General Meeting, Reliance Jio finally announced that registrations for its JioGigaFiber services will commence from August 15. However, it seems that the company is facing difficulties in the last-mile rollout due to unforeseen weather conditions. LiveMint, via someone who is close to the development, states “The process of laying fibre outside has been stopped due to unfavourable weather as the government does not give permission to dig during rains.” We have also confirmed of the same from our own sources within Jio. The company is reportedly ready to coordinate with local cable operators for tackling the problem.
Jio's Head of Strategy and Planning, Anshuman Thakur previously said that the company’s FTTH network will cover 99 percent of the country and they will soon be ready to roll out the JioGigaFiber services. However, it seems that even after covering most areas of the country, the company is facing issues with a broader launch. “It does not look like the company will be able to go for a mass-scale launch,” LiveMint's source said. “Rights of way is a huge problem at the municipality level. To overcome this, Reliance Jio has appointed one liaisoning officer for every state to ensure the roll-out is not delayed.”
Jio had announced the commercial rollout of its JioGigaFiber plans early last month. With speeds of up to 1Gbps, the service is said to first rollout to 1100 cities across India after August 15, 2018, when the registrations for the service begin. The company has urged users to express their interest in JioGigaFiber through the Jio website or the My Jio app once the registration goes live. Regions with the largest number of registrations will get JioGigaFiber connectivity first, but the company is yet to announce the pricing of its plans.
While Jio is racing ahead for launching its services pan India, other telecom and broadband providers have also upped the ante. BSNL has reportedly revised four of its FTTH plans to offer additional data than the earlier set FUP and at higher speeds. The company has revised its FTTH plans priced at Rs 3,999, Rs 5,999, Rs 9,999, and Rs 16,999, and is offering 500GB, 1000GB, 2TB and 3TB of data per month respectively. You can learn more about the revamped broadband offerings here.