Reliance Jio has started selling smartphones under the Lyf brand with SIM cards that are enabled to support high-speed service in bigger cities in India. This is the very first time that regular customers will get access to the 4G network of Jio after the company launched 4G services for its employees at the end of last year.
These SIM cards are bundled with three months of free unlimited data along with 4,500 minutes of voice calls. This suggests an imminent commercial launch. The analysts expect Jio to introduce full-scale commercial operations sometime later this year, perhaps by around December.
This move of Jio coincides with the launch of the website Jio.com through which the customers can register and get Jio connections. The company has take a step ahead from the system of employees of up to 10 people as perspective buyers of Lyf smartphones with a Jio SIM card supporting 4G connectivity.
As of now, Reliance Jio has not revealed anything about the development regarding the commercial launch of the service.
Jio is called the world’s biggest start-up by Mukesh Ambani as the company has invested over Rs 1.5 lakh crore. Jio will offer broadband speeds of up to 80 times faster than the existing offerings at reasonable rates.
There are expectations that the launch of Jio will trigger a price war that will leave an impact on the financials of current telcos. The key players such as Vodafone, Bharti Airtel, and Idea Cellular have already introduced 4G services. They are lowering the data traffics to attract potential customers and retain the old ones as well.
Lyf smartphones that are launched with 4G SIM cards are sold in large-format retail stores in cities such as Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and other tier 1 cities in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Maharashtra, claim people with knowledge about the subject.
The Reliance Digital Mini and Reliance Digital store executives in many cities have confirmed the development as retailers and store owners have partnered with Jio in order to sell the Lyf branded smartphones.
