“Life cannot survive without oxygen. Data is the oxygen of Digital Life, and oxygen must never be in short supply. Worse still, the supply of oxygen for digital life must never be unaffordable to any user. Doing so shows disrespect for Life,” were the words of Mukesh Ambani, Chairman of the Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) at the 39th annual general meeting (AGM) of shareholders on September 1, 2016.

In 2024, this ‘digital oxygen’ is a part of everyday life -- from paying money to the street side vegetable vendor to watching movies on mobile and on your TV set.

Addressing the AGM on Thursday, he said Jio had around 490 million users with around 30 GB of data being consumed per user per month on Jio’s mobile network.

It was 25 GB per user per month in 2022-23, and 20 GB per user per month in 2021-22. It shows that whether you are streaming, browsing, or simply staying connected, the ‘digital oxygen’ is helping you to do all that.

Past experience

RIL’s second innings in telecom sector was announced at the AGM on June 18, 2010.

“Nearly a decade has passed since I first spoke to you about the phenomenal opportunity of bringing affordable and next generation communication access to all Indians. Much has changed in these eight years since Reliance first ventured into the Infocomm space with 2G CDMA based mobile services. From less than 5 million mobile users in 2001, India today has grown to nearly 600 million mobile users and continues to add close to 20 million new customers every month,” he said.

Design for future

Referring to RIL’s acquisition of 95 per cent stake in Infotel Broadband Services Pvt Ltd (the only successful bidder in all the 22 circles in the broadband wireless access auction conducted by the Government then), he foresaw a vision of creating a nation-wide network of next-generation wireless broadband services.

His next three AGM speeches in 2011-13 provided an idea on how the company was going forward in this journey.

On the conceptualization of products and services under its telecom initiative in 2011’s AGM, he termed this initiative as once in a generation opportunity to improve productivity and provide a new way of life to consumers.

“It will gather momentum and visibility in the coming years. Reliance will be at the forefront of bringing about this digital revolution. A revolution that will help India lead the world,” were his words then. In 2012’s meeting he mentioned it as a unique green-field opportunity Reliance had to create a digital services platform without being constrained by any legacy issues; and went on to add in 2013 that digital services should not be a scarce commodity to be rationed amongst the privileged few.

...And field trials begin

He announced field trials for the 4G broadband service in the country at AGM on June 18, 2014. By 2015’s AGM, Reliance Jio was present in nearly 18,000 cities and towns and had wireless footprint in 1 lakh villages with a 2.5 lakh km of end-to-end all-IP fibre optic network.

Comparing data to ‘oxygen’ of digital life in 2016, Ambani said the world’s demand for ‘digital oxygen’ – data -- is growing explosively. Jio’s mission was to meet this exploding need for India, and to take the nation from data shortage to data abundance.

Giving an overview of Jio ecosystem, he said it stood on fundamental pillars such as network, devices, applications and content, digital service experience, and simple tariffs.

Highlighting Jio’s 4G network in 18,000 towns and 2 lakh villages at that point of time, he announced tariff of over 90 per cent discount prevailing in the industry then. A GB was data was priced around Rs 4,000–10,000 then.

Proving sceptics wrong

Ambani took time in the 2017 AGM to explain how Jio proved critics and sceptics wrong on India’s digital initiatives, and the success of acquiring 125 million customers after Jio’s launch on September 5, 2016 justifying investments of over ₹2 lakh crore in a greenfield 4G LTE all-IP network then.

Voice over LTE was a globally unproven technology for sceptics at that point of time. Stating that Jio proved them wrong, he said it enabled Jio users to make unlimited free voice calls in India.

Jio users made more than 250 crore minutes of voice and video calls every day, and consumed over 125 crore GB of data every month, including 165 crore hours of video every month.

On user base and consumption trends, Ambani’s 2018 AGM speech said user base increased to 215 million, data usage to around 240 crore GBs a month, voice usage to 530 crore minutes a day, and video consumption to 340 crore hours a month during 2017-18.

Data ‘dark’ to ‘shining bright’

Ambani’s 2019 AGM speech focused on the impact of data on India. Stating that India was ‘data dark’ before the launch of Jio three years ago, he said India is ‘data shining bright’ with Jio.

 

In 2018-19, Jio’s customer base crossed 340 million, and the company invested Rs 3.5 lakh crore towards creating a digital infrastructure with the largest optical fiber footprint.

Jio Fiber’s (fixed broadband service) installation in around half a million trial homes led to consumption of around 100 GB per home per month. Registrations for formal launch began in August 2019.

Addressing the Covid-hit 2020 AGM, Ambani said all of India was reliant on digital connectivity during the pandemic. Jio kickstarted the accelerators of growth of digital connectivity such as mobile broadband, Jio Fiber (connecting over a million homes), enterprise broadband service, broadband for small and medium enterprises, and Jio’s Narrowband Internet-of-Things (NBIoT) service.

Explaining the exponential growth in the digital data consumption during the Covid-hit years, his 2021 AGM speech mentioned that Jio increased user base to more than 400 million and handled over 630 crore GB of data during 2020-21. Jio Fiber connected around 2 million premises, and data consumption grew by 3.5 times.

Explaining the growth in data consumption in the country, Ambani’s 2022 AGM speech mentioned that Jio had 421 million mobile broadband subscribers with around 20 GB per capita consumption per month.

During 2021-22, Jio’s pan-India fiber-optic network at around 11 lakh km in length then was enough to go around Planet Earth more than 27 times, and Jio Fiber had connected around 7 million premises.

In 2023’s AGM, he said Jio’s overall customer base crossed 450 million subscribers with 25 GB per capita consumption every month. This translates to a monthly data traffic of 1100 crore GB.

During 2022-23, Jio Fiber connectivity crossed 10 million subscribers with a per capita consumption of around 280 GB per month which is over 10 times higher than its per-capita mobile data consumption. Jio’s optical fiber infrastructure spanned over 15 lakh km across India.

Sets eyes on 5G

Referring to the development of Jio’s Made-In-India 5G solution, he informed the 2020 AGM that this would help enable Jio to launch a world-class 5G service in India using 100 per cent home grown technologies and solutions.

He said Jio Platforms, along with its over 20 start-up partners, built significant capabilities in several areas such as 4G and 5G technologies, cloud computing, devices and operating systems, big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, virtual and mixed reality, block chain, natural language understanding, and computer vision.

In 2021’s AGM, he said the company received the necessary regulatory approvals and trial spectrum for initiating 5G field-trials.

Announcing Jio 5G services in 2022’s AGM, he said latency or lag can be reduced by using 5G technology, and it can deliver breakthrough increases in broadband speed, network capacity, and the number of connected users.

Announcing Jio AirFiber in 2023’s meeting, he said it uses 5G network and advanced wireless technologies to bypass the need for last-mile fiber.

Getting ready for AI revolution

Setting his eyes on AI for another growth area for Jio, Ambani’s 20223 AGM speech said RIL Group is rapidly augmenting its talent pool and capabilities to swiftly assimilate the latest global innovations in AI, especially the recent advances in generative AI.

He said Jio Platforms wants to lead the effort in developing India-specific AI models and AI-powered solutions across domains, thereby delivering the benefit of AI to Indian citizens, businesses and government alike.

“Seven years ago, Jio promised broadband connectivity to everyone, everywhere. We have delivered. Today Jio promises AI to everyone, everywhere,” he said in the AGM of 2023.

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