India’s Jio creates 5G tech in-house, teams with Google on affordable smartphone
As major investments from tech giants stack up for India’s Jio Platforms, the chairman of parent Reliance Industries said a complete 5G solution created from scratch in-house by Jio can be ready for field deployments in 2021.
Speaking during Reliance’s Annual General Meeting on Wednesday, billionaire owner Mukesh Ambani laid out visions for its Jio Platforms unit, including plans to export 5G technologies to other telecom operators globally.
Jio Platforms is behind India’s largest mobile operator, which shook up the telecom market since entering the scene just four years ago – now counting more than 388 million subscribers. Ambani said he sees a strong path for Jio to connect over 500 million mobile customers, more than a billion smart sensors and over 50 million homes and business in the next three years.
With its 4G LTE-only network, Reliance Jio disrupted India’s telecom market that was largely 2G, offering very low pricing, broad coverage, and data. Some of India’s numerous operators at the time were forced to exit or decided to consolidate, leaving three major players – Vodafone Idea, Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio.
