Shah Rukh to be brand ambassador of Reliance Jio

New Delhi :Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan will be the brand ambassador of billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s telecom venture Reliance Jio, which will launch the 4G services on December 27.

The company will, however, begin the commercial rollout of the service from March-April and the Sunday’s soft launch will be only for Reliance Industries’ employees.

“I am their brand ambassador. Mukesh Bhai explained it to me. Actually its his children who are doing it. All the three are very close to me,” Khan said in an interview to ETV.

Khan and musician A R Rahman will host the soft launch function of Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd’s (RJIL) 4G service on December 27. The film star added that Reliance Jio deferred the launch twice because it was looking to improve the services.

“They deferred it twice, because they felt there is work still left in end use. 27th will be soft launch and in March-April we will do more. So I think Jio will be revolutionary. Not just for India. It will change things around world for India,” Khan said. When contacted, a Jio spokesperson said “Shah Rukh Khan is launching Jio on 27th December.”

RIL Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani in June had said that beta programme (trials) of Reliance Jio “will be upgraded into commercial operations around December of this (2015) year” and “financial year 2016-17 will be the first full year of commercial operations for Jio”.

Later in October, RIL said financial year “2016-17 is projected to be the first year of commercial operations for RJIL”. Khan in the interview said the new service will be a game changer as it will increase speed and with speed, information and knowledge.

“We have only seen tip of the iceberg. It will lead to a lot of innovations. This will increase speed. Speed will increase information, knowledge. It will be used at various places, I think, from education to production to manufacturing. I am talking very futuristic,” Khan said.

Reliance Jio holds the highest amount of liberalised spectrum among telecom operators that can be used for deploying any technology for mobile services. It has a total of 751.1 MHz spectrum across 800 MHz, 1,800 MHz and 2,300 MHz bands.

According to field trials by brokerage firm Credit Suisse, download speed on 4G network of Reliance Jio during beta-test peaked at 70 megabit per second but remained in 15-30 mbps range on most occasions. Khan was earlier the brand ambassador of Bharti Airtel.

Telecom major Bharti Airtel’s Founder and Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal had recently said that RJIL was using Airtel’s two icons, Khan and Rahman, for the soft launch.

PTI