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Reliance Jio Infocomm, Mukesh Ambani's ambitious telecom venture, has launched high-speed data services, with trial runs at eight hot spots in Ahmedabad.
The company is offering higher speed than 3G, but it is not clear whether it is a 4G service, experts said. These services were launched by Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi under e-nagar project on Wednesday.
The maximum downloading speed in 3G is up to 22 mbps, while the average downloading speed at these wi-fi spots is much above 40 mbps. Experts said in Ahmedabad 3G is offered at maximum speed of 22 mbps, while 4G is technically ten times faster.
"The services which Reliance Jio is offering in Ahmedabad are neither 4G nor 3G, but somewhere in between. We are offering data service at downloading speed of 40 mbps. This is a trial run launched by company for the first time in India. We are just testing and taking feedback from users and so the service is offered free for three months," said a technician who had come to take feedback of users at one of the hotspots in city on Thursday.
Reliance Industries or Reliance Jio officials are not willing to speak on the issue as of now.
The services have begun in the name of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) hot spots. The AMC officials, on condition of anonymity, said the services are offered by Reliance Jio so only they can speak on the issue.
Reacting to the development, an official of another telecom firm said, "Company cannot launch 4G directly so early, as country is yet to develop the ecosystem. There are over 400 mobile handset brands in India out of which probably one or two have 4G handsets. So probably the company wants to test it through wi-fi hotspots," said a circle head of one of the telecom companies.
According to an official of one of the leading telecom operators, "Reliance Jio is using wi-fi as last mile connectivity to provide high speed data. In this case, the data downloading cannot be as faster as 4G but it can be faster than 3G," he said.
