RIL’s telecom arm to take over as service provider for Railways from January 1

Reliance Industries’ (RIL) telecom arm — Reliance Jio Infocomm (Jio) will serve the railways from January 1. The company to slash the national transporter’s phone bills by around 35% at least.

Railways has been using Bharati Airtel for over six years as its telecom provider for 1.95 lakh mobile phone connections used by its employees in closed user group (CUG) across the country for which the railways paid around Rs 100 crore bill per year. Its validity will expire on December 31, 2018.

Reliance Industries is India’s largest private sector company. The company’s activities span hydrocarbon exploration and production, petroleum refining and marketing, petrochemicals, retail and 4G digital services.