Armed with trial spectrum and regulatory approvals, Jio Platforms Ltd is aiming to be the first company to rollout full-fledged 5G services across the country. Further, the company is also looking to export 5G solutions to other telecom operators across the world.
Last year, Jio said it developed an indigenous and comprehensive 5G solution which was fully cloud-native, software-defined and digitally-managed. The ‘Made in India’ 5G solution had also achieved throughput of 1 GBPS.
The company has already installed entire 5G standalone network in its data centres across the country. RJio is also planning to set up the equipment and infrastructure at its trial in Navi Mumbai, RIL Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani told shareholders at the company’s AGM today on Thursday. “Recently, we received the necessary regulatory approvals as well as trial spectrum for initiating 5G field-trials…. We are confident of being the first to launch full-fledged 5G services and Jio’s network is uniquely positioned to quickly and seamlessly upgrade from 4G to 5G,” Ambani said.
Kshitij Purohit, Lead International and Commodities at CapitalVia Global Research Ltd, told
‘Huge opportunity’
“The companies are readying for 5G rollout with technology and infrastructure, and would launch the services as soon as the government provides spectrum and licences,” Purohit added.
Reliance is using Open RAN (O-Ran) platform to build its 5G network solutions. This attempts to make core network equipment vendor-neutral with disaggregation of hardware and software functions built on general purpose processors. This avoids vendor lock-in and minimises payment of royalty towards Standard Essential Patents.
“This is a huge opportunity for Indian companies to latch on to. For the past many decades, Indian companies have been trying to break into the telecom equipment market but have not been able to compete with the likes of Nokia, Ericsson and the Chinese players.
Open RAN is an opportunity that can change things around,” said an industry expert.
There are multiple Indian players that are already looking at developing 5G solutions to grab the opportunity, but the entry of Tata group, along with Reliance, could boost the entire ecosystem.
“Until now there were doubts whether Indian players will be able to come up with a viable 5G network solution. But with Tatas entering this space one can expect to finally see a made-in-India telecom network brand,” said a telecom executive.