Mukesh Ambani, the richest man in India and the CEO and Managing Director of Reliance Industries, during his speech at the India Mobile Congress 2020 on Tuesday, announced that Jio would release 5G in the second half of 2021.
The billionaire also said that India is one of the best countries in terms of being digitally connected, and to preserve this lead, policy steps are needed to accelerate the early rollout of 5G. He also promised to make it affordable and available everywhere. He dedicated this new 5G network to be a “testimony” to the Prime Minister’s inspiring vision of ATMA-NIRBHAR BHARAT.
“I assure you that JIO will pioneer the 5G Revolution in India in the second half of 2021,” he said.
Jio has been working on the 5G network for quite some time now. During the company’s annual general meeting in July which was held over video conference, the company stated that it was developing a homegrown 5G solution. Ambani also said that Jio would build the 5G network from scratch which will enable them to build a “world-class 5G service in India”.
During the AGM, he also announced that the 5G solution will be ready for trials as soon as the 5G spectrum is available. Jio already has a great 4G network. The company believes that transforming that to 5G would be easy due to its converged all IP network architecture. It would take the conglomerate a shorter time to switch to the latest gen of cellular networks unlike its rivals Airtel and Vi.
Jio is also working with companies like Samsung and Qualcomm to bring the 5G network in India to reality. Speaking at the Qualcomm 5G Summit, Reliance Jio Infocomm President Mathew Oommen said that Jio has developed a fully indigenous 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) product. In the same event, Qualcomm also announced that Snapdragon will support OpenRAN 5G, along with Jio and various other telcos.
Jio and Qualcomm together had also announced that they have achieved speeds up to 1 Gbps during tests conducted by Radisys Corporation, a company wholly owned by Jio Platforms.
Jio also announced that to bring its 2G-mukt-bharat plan to life, it is working with Google to launch its 4G smartphone at a cheap and affordable price. The pricing is estimated to be around Rs. 4000 and the phone is estimated to launch in the first quarter of 2021.
“As many as 300 million mobile subscribers in India are still trapped in the 2G era,” Mukesh Ambani said during his speech at the India Mobile Summit.
On the matter of the new 5G network that the company would roll out, Mukesh Ambani portrayed his confidence that it “will enable India to not only participate in the Fourth Industrial Revolution but also to lead it.”
