Competition for Elon Musk? With Jio SpaceFiber, Ambani launches India’s First Satellite-based GigaFiber Internet Service

Reliance Jio Infocomm, the mobile data arm of Reliance Industries, on Friday (27 October) became the first entity to showcase broadband internet via satellite in India.

 

The demonstration was staged at the India Mobile Congress that was inaugurated earlier in the day by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who also visited the Jio stand to briefly witness the demo.

 

The company states that it has connected four remote locations — Gir in Gujarat, Korba in Chhattisgarh, Nabrangpur in Odisha, and the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) installation in Jorhat, Assam, with what it has christened "JioSpaceFiber."

 

 

 

 

(1.) As the name suggests, it is a satellite-based internet network; with it, the company seeks to extend high-speed broadband services to areas previously inaccessible. It is in addition to Jio's existing offerings – JioFiber and Jio AirFiber.

 

(2.) For the ambitious project, Reliance Jio teamed upwith SES, a Luxembourg-based satellites communication provider, which operates geostationary GEO (geosynchronous earth orbit) satellites and medium earth orbit MEO satellites. It will leverage the latter's O3b and the new O3b mPower satellites for the purpose.

 

(3.) For its SpaceFiber offerings in India, Jio will harness the SES MEO O3b and O3b mPOWER satellites, which promise to deliver at gigabit (1,000 MBPS) speeds across land, sea, and space.

 

(4.)Using these satellites, Reliance will tap into the latest in medium earth orbit (MEO) technology to ‘bolster' mobile backhaul capacity, thus expanding the reach and scalability of Jio's True5G network even in remote areas.

 

(5.) In September 2022, Jio Satellites, a Reliance Jio unit, received approval from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to start high-speed broadband-from-space services, as per Economic Times.

 

 (6.)Jio SpaceFiber, meanwhile, is already available in four of India's most remote locations: Gir (Gujarat), Korba (Chhattisgarh), Nabarangpur (Odisha) and ONGC-Jorhat (Assam). It will soon be available throughout the country at highly competitive prices.