Reliance Jio broadband ramp-up likely to be gradual: Urmil Shah, IDBI Capital

Even for Hathway and Den, which are now owned by Reliance, high speed broadband pickup has been lower than what it was expected to be, says Urmil Shah, Research Analyst & Vice President, IDBI Capital. Excerpts from an interview with ETNOW.

Just to get your first reactions to the Reliance Jio GigaFibre launch. How you think the impact is likely to be?
Reliance has bundled high speed data along with a lot of value-added services across voice, video, gaming, home networking security as well as virtual reality experience for their high-end plan but the only thing which should be positive, especially for the multiplex stocks is that while earlier it was expected that the “first-day-first-show” movies would be available even on the base plan, but they are now available at the top three premium plans and to that extent it is a positive. Otherwise, for the media sector as a whole and content providers, the news is very positive.

Analysts are saying that perhaps a ramp-up will be gradual and there will be limited impact on DTH operators. What is your view on that?
Yes look at how the performance has been of Hathway or Den which are now owned by Reliance. For them also, high speed broadband pickup has been lower than what it was expected to be. The base plan is Rs 700 plus GST. So the the ramp-up should be gradual and considering that the discretionary spend is not very strong right now, in the short term, it should be definitely casual.