Reliance Industries Aims to Clobber Indian TV and Telecom Sector

BENGALURU: The Indian business magnet, Mukesh Ambani is lining up to burst into cable TV industry and thriving to bring revolutionary escalations in media and telecom sector in upcoming years. Mukesh Ambani’s visionary project will rack up the entertainment industry, creating a thwart market competition for his younger brother’s Reliance Communications (RCom), reports Reuters.

The chairman of Reliance Industries has recently invested nearly $18 billion on 4G telecom brand –RJio, to shake up the telecom territory. A step further to his ambitious roadway, Ambani formulates to provide cable TV services, all over India with expected spending budget of around $2 billion, over next three years. The leading oil and gas industrialist sees this as a huge opportunity as there are only 20 million homes that are connected to internet through broadband connection and further just 170,000 fiber-optic consumers are there to leverage wireless connectivity.

There are disparate small scale cable TV operators powering the enormous but fragmented in the home entertainment business in India. The television department led by Ambani has been approaching and tying-up nodes with cluster of cable TV providers like Hathway Cable, Den Networks and Siti Cable in each-and-every part of India to build a strong network base flourishing fiber-cable based TV offerings. According to the Reliance Executives the comprehensive suit will consist hundreds of channels, HD video-on demand service, coupled with broadband Internet, a landline phone and home surveillance system. In addition, a unique offering –Indian version of Netflix, “Jio Play” will be offered to address movies and TV series streaming category.

To give a clue of company’s future-plan for this project, one of the Reliance officials indicated to Reuters that they have a mid-year goal of 1 million subscribers and by the medium-term it will rise to 5 million TV sets. In following three years they are aiming to reach 20 million homes.

RCom’s towers and cables structure will also be utilized by Reliance Industries to establish TV network across India. According to Reuters’ reports, As Mukesh's telecom and cable projects take hold, analysts and industry executives say Reliance Industries' clout and the scale of its effort will pressure smaller rivals, including RCom.

"If you look at each of these strategies, at the core of it, it's no different from what others have done," said Kunal Bajaj, a telecoms consultant. "But (what) the company is planning is at a scale that no one's done before in India," reports Reuters.

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