Article RIL poised for big bang cellphone debut

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Billionaire Mukesh Ambani-run RIL's telecom arm, Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJI) has asked the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to release four crore new series of phone numbers for all 22 telecom circles as it plans for an aggressive pan-India launch of mobile phone services on 4G (Fourth-Generation) spectrum sometime soon.

The ambitious move is expected to generate fierce competition in the telecom sector and comes at a time when the debt- ridden telcos had started firming up call rates to shore up their bottomlines.

4G FACTFILE

-4G spectrum, also called Long- Term Evolution (LTE) or Broadband Wireless Access spectrum (BWA), is the mostefficient band of spectrum. It is considered to be the future of the telecom industry. It offers data transmission almost four times the speed of 3G and 16 times the speed of 2G.

-A 4G system, which operates on 2,300 MHz band frequency, provides advanced mobile communication services, ranging from mobile web access to high- definition mobile TV, video conferencing, 3D TV and cloud computing.

-In 2010, six private players - RJI, Bharti Airtel, Aircel, Qualcomm, Tikona Digital and Augere-had won BWA spectrum. RJI had won 20 Mhz of pan- India BWA spectrum for providing 4G services for Rs 12,847.77 crore and emerged as the sole winner of pan-India BWA licence.
RJI has submitted an application to the telecommunication ministry stating that the company immediately needs 40 lakh phone numbers for each metro city, 20 lakh for A and B telecom circles and 10 lakh for category C circles, which comprises small towns and rural areas of the country.

DoT secretary M. F. Farooqui told Mail Today on Friday that the department has received a letter from RJI for the new series of phone numbers as they plan to launch their telecom services. "I don't recall the quantum of phone numbers they have asked for but we have received their application in this regard," said Farooqui.


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