JioFiber, the new gigabit-capable fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) provider owned by Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, has launched commercially today (5 September). Entry-level fibre broadband packages start at INR700 (USD9.7) for a 100Mbps subscription.
The service is understood to be available in multiple cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Surat, Vadodara, Chennai, Noida, Ghaziabad, Bhubaneshwar, Varanasi, Allahabad, Bengaluru, Surat, Agra, Meerut, Vishakapatnam, Lucknow, Jamshedpur, Haridwar, Gaya, Patna, Port Blair and Punjab. Connectivity will be gradually expanded to other parts of the country. According to a previous statement by parent company Reliance Jio Infocomm, JioFiber has received more than 15 million registrations in the past year from would-be customers in around 1,600 towns in India.
The fibre launch – which follows a year of Beta testing – marks the third anniversary of Jio’s pan-Indian mobile unit entering the market. Jio’s aggressive promotional activities triggered a momentous price war, which ultimately forced a number of its embattled rivals to merge or exit the market altogether. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, as of 30 June 2019 Jio claimed first place in the Indian wireless sector, with a 31.3% market share.