Reliance is associated with also ran telecom companies; I still have to see them recover from the massive negative publicity generated because of their handset schemes and poor billing resolution mechanisms. Despite their media hype about being a 100,000 crore company (I wonder how do these valuations come in), they are a no where in the broadband retail and laggards in the mobile space too behind of course, the market “leader” Airtel.
Anil Ambani must be eating out of his hands. He is spreading himself thin with annoucement of massive power projects and his arguments with his elder sibling Mukesh who is rolling out a retail juggernaut. If the media reports are to be believed, Mukesh is far more capable of rolling out massive projects than Anil; however, I don’t trust these reports anyway.
Anil is still claiming that the next generation IPTV delivered over Gbps speeds would forever change the TV viewing habits of the populace. I have reason to be circumspect. With suboptimal branding of his existing Broadband lines and marketing 150kbps as “broadband”, his claims fall flat on it’s face. I still have to see anything substantial in their offerings either in their fixed line or mobiles.
Hence all these claims need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Since there is no independent verification of the same, I’d rather rely on the ground action than delusions of grandeur.