Reliance Jio Infocomm is shaking things up in India ahead of the launch of its 4G network late this year or early next year. The Indian telco is pushing for a 700 MHz 4G auction to bolster its network ahead of the ambitious launch, but rivals are fighting to keep that from happening.
Jio hopes to have an early version of its network in metro areas by December, but that could be pushed back until March, according to sources familiar with the launch plans. The telco has told India’s telecom department it will buy as much as 20 megahertz of the 700 MHz spectrum if the auction happens early next year.
“Jio has assured the telecom department that it will buy any surplus airwaves in case others don’t bid,” a person familiar with Jio’s plans said.
Competitors such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular want the auction to be pushed back by at least two years. They want to see how the ecosystem develops in the next few years before making plans to buy more spectrum.
A senior executive with one of the incumbent companies said 4G will not be widely adopted for another two years, so it doesn’t make sense to start the bidding now. “It is only after that 700MHz will [we] see true bidding competition, and not in the near future,” he explained.
This is a move that makes sense for Jio as its competitors have already been investing heavily in expanding their 3G and 4G networks the past few years and would not have as much capital to spend if the auction were to happen early next year, pushing down the price for Jio.
In 2012, regulators set an initial price for the 700 MHz band at two times the price of the 900 MHz band, which itself doubled in price in March of this year, according to the Economic Times of India.
Jio recently announced its ambitious network plans at the Small Cell Americas conference in Dallas, which includes more than 100,000 macro sites, 150,000 small cell, 500,000-plus Wi-Fi access points and more than 234,000 kilometers of fiber to be deployed in the next three years.
