Reliance Jio Intra-City Fiber Network May Now be Largest: Credit Suisse

New Delhi: Telecom operator Reliance Jio Infocomm is gearing up to build country's biggest mobile back-end facilities for its 4G services launch by March 2015 while its own optical fiber network within city areas may already be the largest among peers, says Credit Suisse.

"We suspect RJio already has the largest intra-city optic fiber network with over 85,000 km across 700-800 towns. This is a major differentiator for mobile backhaul in an industry with sub-10 per cent fiber penetration into towers," a Credit Suisse report by analysts Sunil Tirumalai and Chunky Shah said.

All calls and mobile data are largely carried by optical fiber cable (OFC) network in telecom networks. As per the report, RJio services will be launched by March 2015.

The analysts said that till now, Reliance Communications (RCom) was believed to have the largest fiber network among private operators, with an intra-city network of about 70,000 route kilometers.

The report said that channel checks of Credit Suisse suggest that over the last couple of years, RJio has completed rollout of about 100,000 Rkm (route kilometer) of OFC.

Credit Suisse also said it expects that RJio is could be soon among the largest data centers companies in India as it has already build about 5 facilities.

"We understand RJio has also built about 5 data centers, with many more expected to come. This could make them among the largest data center companies in India. We understand that the long term game plan is to have over 40 data centers across the country," the report said.

Tata Communications at present has 11 data centres in India -- the maximum. As per the report, RCom has 9 centers Airtel 7 and Vodafone 2.

"Moreover, our channel checks suggest that the bandwidth of fiber cable being rolled out by RJio is superior. The normal cables used by the industry have 12-24 fiber threads, while RJio's appears to be using mostly cables with 288 fibers, in some cases 96 fibers," the report said.