Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (RJio) has acquired spectrum worth ₹57,123 crore across all the 22 circles, a move that will enable it to provide LTE services and upgrade to 5G at a future date.

The company has acquired spectrum in the 800 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2300 MHz bands at an effective cost of ₹60.8 crore per MHz, RJio said in a statement.

Through this acquisition, RJio’s total owned spectrum footprint has increased by 55 per cent o 1,717 MHz. The company has the highest amount of sub-GHz spectrum with 10 MHz contiguous spectrum in most circles, and it also has at least 10 MHz in 1800 MHz band and 40 MHz in 2300 MHz band in each of the 22 circles, it added.

As per terms of the spectrum auction, the deferred payments have to be made over a period of 18 years (2 year moratorium plus 16 year repayment period), with interest computed at 7.3 per annum.

“Jio has revolutionised the digital landscape of India with the country becoming the fastest adopter of Digital Life. We want to ensure that we keep on enhancing experiences, not only for our existing customers, but also for the next 300 million users that will move to digital services. With our increased spectrum footprint, we are ready to further expand the digital footprint in India as well as get ourselves ready for the imminent 5G rollout,” Mukesh D Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Industries, said.

The acquired spectrum can be utilised for transition to 5G services at the appropriate time, where Jio has developed its own 5G stack.

With the enhanced spectrum footprint, especially contiguous spectrum, and pan-India infrastructure deployed, RJio has enhanced network capacity to service its existing users as well as hundreds of millions of more subscribers on its network, it added.

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