Reliance Industries Ltd Chairman Mukesh D Ambani said Jio Infocomm ( the company’s telecommunications arm ) plans to invest Rs 2 lakh crore for the rapid rollout of 5G services which will be available to users across key cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata, by Diwali.
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During the company’s Annual General Meeting on Monday, Ambani said pan-India coverage of 5G would happen by December 2023.
“I firmly believe that digital freedom is the birthright of every Indian. Therefore, 5G cannot remain an exclusive service, available only to the privileged few or only to those in our largest cities,” Ambani said during his address to the shareholders. He said Jio had prepared an ambitious 5G roll-out plan, which would be the fastest in the world.
Ambani said Jio’s 5G network would be the world’s largest and most advanced 5G network and that it would deploy Standalone 5G, which has zero dependence on existing 4G infrastructure as opposed to non-standalone 5G.
The chairman said most operators were deploying a version of 5G, called Non-Standalone 5G, which is essentially a 5G radio signal delivered over an existing 4G infrastructure. “This Non-Standalone approach is a hasty way to nominally claim a 5G launch, but it won’t deliver the breakthrough improvements in performance and capability possible with 5G,” he said.
He added that Jio had further consolidated its position as India’s Number One digital service provider over the past year. “Today, we have 421 million mobile broadband subscribers on our 4G network. And on average, they consume nearly 20 GB of broadband data every month, nearly doubling their consumption from the year before,” Ambani said. The company said it was committed to making India the largest data-powered economy in the world, beating China and the US.
Jio will use its combined wireless and wireline assets to cover every part of India, connecting even those parts of the country where, thus far, satellite technology was considered the only option. Jio made strong progress in fibre and FTTH deployment with a pan-India fibre-optic network of more than 11 lakh route kilometres. Two out of three new customers choose JioFiber.
“India is ranked 138th in the world in fixed broadband adoption. Jio will take India to the top 10 globally in fixed broadband adoption,” Ambani said. Jio said it has some of the world’s leading technology players as partners in its “Made in India” 5G collaboration:
- Meta: Immersive technology
- Google: Develop ultra-affordable 5G smartphones; Google Cloud
- Microsoft: Azure ecosystem, vibrant ecosystem of cloud-enabled business applications and solutions
- Intel: Cloud-scale data centres and 5G edge locations
With well-established relationships with leading global network technology providers like Qualcomm, Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and Cisco, Jio has consolidated its position as India’s number one digital services provider, with very strong operating and financial results, Ambani said.
“As of now we don’t have any details on the pricing of the pack, 5G packs and there were expectations on some announcements regarding a 5G handset from Jio. The other thing to note is that the company has announced that it would have pan-India coverage by December 2023 and they have also earmarked Rs 2 two lakh crore of capital investment, of course, we don’t know what timeframe this investment would be made. So I think some of those finer details are not yet known,” said Balaji Subramanian, Vice President of IIFL Securities.
Industry experts advised cautious optimism as, despite the ambitious plans for the 5G rollout, we still have no concrete details.
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