Reliance Communications lines up Net Connect push

Reliance Communications (RCOM) is planning a major rural push for its high-speed wireless internet service Reliance Net Connect service. The company is expected to announce its rural Net Connect variant at a price range less than Rs 500 per month offering unlimited internet access.

RCOM’s rural push is part of its strategy to build an aggressive presence and market share in the fast-growing rural internet market for its Net Connect service. According to industry estimates, nearly 20 per cent of the current internet users are emerging from Indian hinterland.

Availability of relevant and meaningful local language content and applications on the net, together with affordable high speed access, may become the biggest enabler in the future growth of Internet usage in India, it is believed. Reliance Net Connect will address the gap in availability of high speed internet access at an affordable price point on a pan India basis across 400,000 villages and 20,000 smaller towns where it will introduce its wireless internet service, company sources said.

As part of its strategy to drive Reliance Net Connect in Indian hinterland, RCOM is targeting the home user segment to convert dial-up users in the rural areas where the speeds for such connections can go upto a maximum of 144 Bps. RCOM’s rural Net Connect variant will give the user a completely new experience with speed of upto 4 to 6 times faster than dial-up connections. RCOM plans to target 30 per cent market share of the rural internet subscriber base over the next one year.

The Reliance Net Connect Card will leverage the existing telecommunications infrastructure for its rural roll-out. Reliance Communications has an established pan-India, next generation, integrated (wireless and wireline), convergent (voice, data and video) digital network that is capable of supporting best-of-class services spanning the entire communications value chain. Reliance Communications owns and operates the world’s largest next generation IP enabled connectivity infrastructure, comprising over 175,000 kilometers of fiber optic cable systems.

The opportunity for RCOM’s Net Connect rural push is huge considering that 63 million of the 368 million literate population in rural India are English-speaking, as many as 15.1 million are computer literates and 3.3 million active Internet users in rural India.

An RCOM spokesperson said that the company “continuously evaluates options to enhance the value proposition of our products and services to our subscribers across India to enhance their overall product experience”.