Jio to complete national 5G rollout by end-year

Jio said it currently has 50 million 5G subscribers

Indian carrier Reliance Jio Infocomm expects to complete the national rollout of 5G by the end of this year, local newspaper Times of India reported Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Jio’s parent company Reliance Industries, as saying.

“We will have nearly one million 5G cells operational in the network by December. In just nine months, Jio 5G is already present in over 96% of the census towns of our country. And we’re on track to cover the entire country by December of this year. This makes Jio 5G the fastest-ever 5G rollout of this scale anywhere in the world,” the executive said.

The executive noted that the carrier already reached 450 million subscribers, of which 50 million have already migrated to 5G.

Reliance Jio Infocomm has been rapidly expanding its 5G network using Standalone (SA) architecture since October 2022. The telco has already deployed its 5G service in 6,258 cities across 36 states in India, according to the carrier’s website.

Reliance Jio had previously secured a mix of wireless spectrum for 5G across the 700 MHz, 3.5 GHz and 26 GHz bands. Jio is the only Indian operator with the 700 MHz low-band spectrum.

Ambani said that Reliance Jio Infocomm will launch its fixed wireless access (FWA) offering on September 19.

Jio has already started testing the device in some cities where its 5G services are fully operational. The devices have reportedly been sent to selected users, including some of the company’s employees, for testing, according to local press reports.

Reliance Jio Infocomm recently said it has created a dedicated 5G network slice for the provision of its 5G fixed wireless access solution.

“Jio AirFiber uses our pan-India 5G network and advanced wireless technologies to bypass the need for last-mile fiber. Through optical fiber, we can currently connect around 15,000 premises daily. But with Jio AirFiber, we can supercharge this expansion with up to 150,000 connections per day. That is a 10-fold increase, expanding our addressable market over the next three years to over 200 million high-paying homes and premises,” Ambani said.

The carrier also announced the launch of the Jio True5G Developer Platform and Jio True5G Lab for the enterprise segment.

“It [the developer platform] offers businesses the flexibility to activate network slices as needed, deploy apps at Jio’s multi-access edge compute locations, and gain access to a wide range of partner apps, all on one platform,” Ambani said.

The Jio True5G Lab will allow Jio’s partners to develop, test and co-create industry-specific offerings. “While we provide connectivity services to over 80% of large enterprises in India, our focus will shift towards the small and medium business segment to scale this rapidly,” Ambani added.