Reliance Jio Infocomm announced on Monday it has partnered with eight global carriers that will drive innovation on a global front. The others who have signed the pact are BT, Deutsche Telekom, Millicom, MTS, Orange, Rogers, TeliaSonera and TIM.
The alliance will ensure a potential customer base of 1 billion users in more than 80 countries have access to innovative products and services more efficiently and quickly. This will be achieved by channeling the focuses on exchanging best practices on approaching the market, partner scouting and sharing knowledge about upcoming trends and services within the group, according to an official statement released on Monday.
"Jio is set to enable each Indian to live a digital life. To this end, we have built the globally largest green-field 4G and fiber network, as well as a suite of digital services that enable entertainment, cloud, payment, and much more," Rainer Deutschmann, Chief Product & Innovation Officer of Reliance Jio Infocomm, said in a statement. "We invite the best partners to work with us to co-create a Digital India."
Jio has already installed 90,000 eco-friendly cell towers with near-zero footprint, laid 2.5 lakh km of fibre-optic cable nationwide, and it has reached 1.02 lakh villages and 18,000 cities across India. The digital growth of India is at an optimum speed, to which, Cisco Executive Chairman John Chambers said, failing to invest in the country would mean missing the bus.
Reliance Jio Infocomm is expected to launch 4G services across India as early as April 2016.
The official statement also said the alliance has tied up with 30 businesses, including AirBnB, Spotify, Celltick, Disconnect and Majisto, and will soon add more operators on its open network. The alliance is covering all relevant product categories within an operator's business, mobile and fixed, as well as B2B and B2C.
Other carrier partners echoed Reliance Jio Infocomm's sentiments in representing their own nations.
"We as operators can provide partners with the best networks and easy distribution to customers. And the partners enable us to provide our customers with the best and most innovative products and services," Christian von Reventlow, Chief Product & Innovation Officer at Deutsche Telekom, said in a statement. "This is a perfect win-win situation for all. Therefore I'm very happy that we were able to build this powerful alliance."
[1 lakh = 100,000 | 1 crore = 10 million | 100 crore = 1 billion]
