Mukesh Ambani Unleashed Reliance Jio Rollout Plans

Mukesh Ambani meets DoT Secretary and updates on Reliance Jio's rollout plans. According to sources, during the meeting with the Telecom Secretary, Ambani provided a full update of rollout plans of Reliance Jio's 4G services, which in trial phase alone has garnered 1.5 million users.

NEW DELHI: Reliance Industries (RIL) chairman Mukesh Ambani met with the telecom secretary JS Deepak as well as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) chairman RS Sharma to update them of its telecom unit's operations amid a raging war with India's largest telcos.

"The meeting lasted over one and a half hours with the secretary," a person familiar with the matter told ET. Akash Ambani, son of the RIL chairman and deeply involved with Reliance Jio Infocomm's operations, was also part of the meeting.

Another person said that the meeting with the Trai chairman involved a powerpoint presentation, giving an update of Jio's operations.

The meeting comes in the middle of a full blown war between the RIL telecom unit Jio and the incumbent telecom operators Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular over the status of Jio's operations. Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal had also met with the telecom secretary recently.

Major incumbent telcos Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular, via the GSM industry body, have alleged that Jio is running full-fledged commercial operations in the guise of trials and are trying to poach their subscribers through mobile number portability.

Jio on its part has said it was following all rules, and in turn, alleged that the incumbents were trying to "sabotage" its entry into the telecom sector by denying it adequate points of interconnect (PoIs) which is leading to a majority of calls from the Jio network dropping, thus delaying the commercial launch. Telcos say they have provided enough PoIs and won't provide more till Jio's commercial launch.