Jio has developed a homegrown 5G situation and will be ready for trial as soon as spectrum is available, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani announced on Wednesday at the company’s Annual General Meeting.
Ambani said that Jio “has designed and developed a complete 5G solution from scratch. It will be ready for trials as soon as 5G spectrum is available and can be ready for field deployment next year”.
Ambani added the 4G and fibre network is powered by several core software technologies and components. "It is this capability and know-how that positions Jio on the cutting edge of another exciting frontier 5G," he said.
Jio's 4G network can easily be converted to 5G, Ambani said.
Furthermore, Ambani said that Jio Platforms, along with over 20 startup partners, “has built world-class capabilities in technologies such as 4G, 5G, Cloud computing, Devices and OS, Big Data, AI, AR/VR, Blockchain, Natural Language Understanding and Computer Vision”.
"Using these technologies, we can create compelling solutions across multiple industry verticals like media, financial services, new commerce, education, healthcare, agriculture, smart cities, smart manufacturing & smart mobility," he said. He added that Jio Platforms is conceived with vision of developing original, captive intellectual property, using which it can demonstrate transformative power of technology across multiple ecosystems first in India, and then rest of world.
The whole process of setting up the network at Reliance's premises will be done without the involvement of any third part vendor or technology provider, Reliance said.
In the next three years, Jio will connect half a billion mobile customers, a billion smart sensors and 50 million home and business establishments, Ambani said.
"We have fully kickstarted five accelerators of growth of digital connectivity: Mobile broadband, JioFiber, Jio's enterprise broadband, broadband for SMEs, and Jio's Narrowband Internet-of-Things (NBIoT)," he noted.
In addition, Jio announced its partnership with Google to create an Android-based smartphone operating system for a smartphone that Jio seeks to launch that could be afforded by the 350 million people who have 2g features phones.
Ambani said they want to design an entry-level smart 4G or even a 5G smartphone that could be built for a fraction of its current cost.
“Google and Jio Platforms have entered into a commercial agreement to jointly develop an entry-level affordable smartphone with optimizations to the Android operating system and the Play Store,” Google said in an announcement.
This is part of Google’s $10 billion India Digitisation Fund, and is the biggest and first investment so far, announced Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
This announcement as Jio Platforms, the subsidiary of Reliance Industries under which Reliance’s digital services, announced that it was investing Rs 33,737 crore for a 7.7% stake in Jio Platforms.
With PTI inputs