Reliance Industries' (RIL's) negotiation with South Korean conglomerate Samsung for developing handsets which can provide voice on 4G technology have hit a hurdle, with the handset maker unwilling to match the price demanded by RIL.
Sources involved in the negotiations said Reliance Jio Infocomm, an RIL subsidiary, wants the handset for Rs 5,000 a piece. But the Korean giant is unwilling to go below Rs 8,500 per handset, and that too only if RIL agrees to buy over 3 million handsets. Without that commitment, Samsung has quoted a price of Rs 11,000 per handset.
RIL is the only company in the country to have all-India airwaves to provide high-speed broadband, and recently also received approval to provide voice services on it.
The Mukesh Ambani-owned company bought 20 Mhz spectrum spectrum in the 2.3 Ghz band in a government-led auction, May 2010, for roughly Rs 13,000 crore. The company plans to launch a TDD-LTE technology, commonly referred to as 4G, or fourth generation. However, the world over the technology is used in the 700MHz band.
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