Reliance Jio Infocomm Becomes The First Operator To Get Pan India Unified Telecom License

While most leading cellular operators in India (including Airtel and Vodafone) have not opted for a unified license for their telecom business, Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (RJIL), the telecom subsidiary of Reliance Industries, has gone ahead and signed the dotted line with the Department of Telecom (DOT) to get the first unified Telecom license in the country. This will enable the operator to work across all of the 22 service areas in the country.

The Unified License would allow RJIL to offer services such as voice telephony, SMS and more under a single license. RJIL had applied and signed up for this license on 22 October 2013, after paying a large requisite fee of over Rs 1,650 crores. RJIL has also migrated its existing ISP license along with Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) spectrum to the Unified License, with this authorization.

This move should enable Reliance industries to manage roaming rates better and their users would not need to hop over to another network when they go out of their native cellular circle. Will this affect the current calling rates and bring them down, is something yet to be seen. Nevertheless, this unique license should allow RJIL to reduce roaming data charges.