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(CNN) - The richest man in India is giving a new push to dominate the country's fast-growing Internet user base by offering high-definition televisions to new broadband customers.
Jio took the Indian market since its launch three years ago.
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Reliance Jio, the mobile network owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, will give away free 4K TVs with some of his new plans. The televisions, available to customers who buy annual subscriptions starting at Rs 15,588 ($ 217), will also come with streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
Mukesh Ambani, president and director of Reliance Industries Ltd., arrives at a polling station during the fourth voting phase for the national elections in Mumbai, India, on Monday, April 29, 2019 (Dhiraj Singh / Bloomberg).
The new broadband network, called JioFiber, will also offer cheaper plans starting at 699 rupees ($ 10) per month. It was launched in 1,600 Indian cities this Thursday.
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"With JioFiber, Jio continues to fulfill its promise to connect the disconnected while producing transformative changes in Indian homes," the company said in a statement.
Ambani inherited most of the Reliance Industries corporate empire that his father created. It started as a textile business, but it has become one of the largest conglomerates in India that covers energy, retail and telecommunications. Ambani and his younger brother, Anil, divided the empire after a bitter battle of succession after his father's death in 2002. Reliance Industries is now worth about $ 108 billion.
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This is not the first gift that Ambani has given in an effort to become the leading provider of Internet access in India. Jio broke into the telecommunications scene in India three years ago with a surprising offer: new network users obtained six months of free 4G mobile data. The move caused an avalanche of mobile subscriptions for Jio and triggered a price war that forced the big rivals to merge and even expelled Ambani's younger brother.
The price of 1 gigabyte of mobile data plummeted from 206 rupees (3 dollars) in 2016 to 12 rupees (17 cents) in 2018 as a result, which allowed hundreds of millions of Indians to have Internet for the first time.
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But there are still more Indians offline than online, with nearly 700 million people who still don't have access to the Internet. Currently, Jio has more than 340 million users and is the second largest telecommunications operator behind Vodafone-Idea.
Jio's latest Internet plans may be beyond the reach of most of them, however, given that the average Indian earns less than $ 2,000 a year, according to the most recent data from the International Labor Organization. But it will give Ambani access to millions of Indian homes and greater control over the country's internet boom.
India Internet
