Reliance Industries appears to be speeding up the process of its Jio GigaFiber rollout as it currently plans to acquire Indian cable operator company Hathway. The move will help the Mukesh Ambani-led company speed up the launch process of its Jio GigaFiber network which has been aimed to reach 50 million homes by the end of the year.
According to The Economic Times, people with direct knowledge to the latest development confirmed that the talks only stand at the initial stage and it’s “too early to say if the deal will go through or not”. What we do know is that RIL is aggressively pursuing it with a valuation figure expected to be around Rs 2,500 crore.
If this deal goes through, Reliance Jio can boost the launch of its cable broadband business after gaining Hathway’s already established user base that offers 90 percent of its subscribers with over 40Mbps speed data. Neither RIL nor Hathway has given their official take on the matter.
This isn’t the first time RIL has made a move to take over another cable operator. Last year, the Mukesh Ambani-led company had approached DEN Networks regarding a buyout soon after which negotiations failed.
Earlier this year, Reliance Jio announced the much-awaited fibre-to-home broadband JioGigaFiber services in India at its Annual General Meeting 2018. JioGigaFiber aims to offer broadband services, IPTC, landline video conferencing, virtual gaming. Users can also connect their virtual reality headsets and enjoy 360-degree 4K videos with the JioGigaFiber. Further, users can use Voice commands on microphone-enabled TV remote to access Jio suites of apps including Jio TV, Jio Cinema and more.