Reliance Jio bets big on 5G SA network and services in India

Reliance Jio has set itself an ambitious target of rolling out a 5G standalone (SA) network across India before the end of 2023 to support enterprise and consumer services. It also has its sights on providing 5G technology and services to other communications service providers (CSPs) worldwide.

“With standalone 5G, Jio can deliver new and powerful services such as low latency connectivity, massive machine-to-machine communication, 5G voice, Edge computing and network slicing, and metaverse,” according to the chairman of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), Mukesh Ambani, in a statement. RIL says it will invest 2 lakh krore ( $25.1 billion) in rolling out an India-wide 5G SA network in under 18 months.

At the beginning of this month, Jio announced it had purchased spectrum in the 700MHz, 800MHz, 1800MHz, 3300MHz and 26GHz bands, making it the biggest buyer in the Indian government’s 5G auctions.

Jio Platforms is one of the reasons Reliance can move quickly on 5G SA roll out. Its engineers have been developing intellectual property since RIL established Jio Platforms in 2019. Recently Jio became the global leader for TM Forum Open API certification with 52 certified TM Forum Open APIs.

“We have indigenously developed an end-to-end 5G stack which is fully cloud native, software defined, digitally managed, with support for even advanced features like quantum security. This is fully developed in-house by our 2,000-plus young Jio engineers, working tirelessly for the past 3 years," according to Ambani. “Jio has already deployed the 5G stack in our network, with sufficient capacity to serve hundreds of millions of users right from day one.”

Jio sees an opportunity to sell its 5G know-how to other telcos. “We are excited by the prospect of exporting Jio 5G solutions to other telecom operators across the world,” said Ambani. In addition to 5G technologies, Jio has been developing AI and machine learning, blockchain and mixed reality.

Partnering on enterprise and consumer services

The Indian 5G enterprise service market could prove to be competitive. Ambani, however, said Jio is tapping into Reliance group’s vertical businesses, which include retail, refineries and energy, for industry-specific knowledge and operational experience. It is also exploring new opportunities in 5G-enabled healthcare.

Majority-owned by RIL, Jio Platform’s other shareholders include Google and Meta and it announced new separate partnerships with both companies. A 5G partnership with Google Cloud will “support businesses in their digital transformation and … build new services in sectors like health, education and more," according to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, addressing RIL's shareholders. It will also make it possible to "offer Jio's private 5G stack and other 5G-enabled solutions to both domestic and global users at scale." In addition, Reliance will shift its core retail businesses to Google’s cloud infrastructure. Google and Jio have also developed a new phone for the Indian market.

Jio's new service with Meta meanwhile will make it possible for Jio customers to shop from JioMart and pay without leaving the WhatsApp chat in what Jio describes as a world-first for WhatsApp.

When it comes to the 5G SA network, the company will use carrier aggregation to combine several transmission bands into one connection and draw on its 700 MHz low-band spectrum to provide deep indoor coverage.

“This three-fold advantage of standalone 5G architecture, largest and best mix of spectrum, and carrier aggregation means that Jio 5G will be able to offer an unparalleled combination of coverage, capacity, quality, and affordability,” claimed Ambani.