Reliance said Jio had developed its own 5G technology and plans to offer it to other telecom companies, a move that will pit it against the likes of Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei and Samsung, in what analysts said was the first such initiative by a mobile phone operator. Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) said Wednesday that its telecom unit had created a complete 5G solution, using 100% homegrown technologies that will allow it to launch next-generation, high-speed services in India. This is as per a report in the Economic Times.
With India looking to keep Huawei and ZTE out following hostilities on the border with China, dependence on the other overseas suppliers would have increased costs, analysts said.
“This Made-in-India 5G solution will be ready for trials as soon as 5G spectrum is available and can be ready for field deployment next year,” RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani said in a speech at the company’s annual general meeting on Wednesday. “Because of Jio’s converged, all-IP network architecture, we can easily upgrade our 4G network to 5G. Once Jio’s 5G solution is proven at India-scale, Jio Platforms would be well positioned to be an exporter of 5G solutions to other telecom operators globally, as a complete managed service.”
Ambani said Jio Platforms had been conceived with the vision of developing an original, captive intellectual property using which “we can demonstrate the transformative power of technology across multiple Industry ecosystems… First in India… and then confidently offering these Made-in-India solutions to the rest of the world.”
The development comes as Huawei and ZTE may get frozen out of other countries owing to heightened suspicions over the links between the Chinese vendors and their government. The US has long been campaigning to exclude Huawei while the UK recently banned the purchase of Huawei 5G equipment and said any such gear that’s installed needs to be removed by 2027.
Analysts said that Jio’s move to develop its own 5G technology is aimed at reducing dependence on foreign vendors and cost-related advantages. This also comes at a time when India is seen to be lagging behind China and others in terms of technology such as 5G. Jio is currently working with South Korea’s Samsung for its pan-India 4G LTE and IoT (internet of things) networks. It also works with players like Nokia for its wireline network in the country.
“Technologies like OpenRAN and Cloud are threatening the monopoly of traditional players like Nokia, Ericsson, and Huawei. Jio is leveraging these technologies to develop its own 5G solutions and is well set to take advantage of its acquisitions of Rancore Technologies and Radisys. These companies are playing a crucial role here in Jio’s 5G journey,” said Rohan Dhamija, partner, South Asia, Analysys Mason.
The acquisitions of Rancore and Radisys accelerated Jio’s in-house development capabilities around open-source technologies and network function virtualisation (NFV) adoption, paving way for the development for IoT platforms and applications, analysts said.
Having developed end-to-end 5G technology, Jio said it now wants to bring a wide array of use cases such as security and surveillance using drones, industrial IoT and digitisation in the agriculture sector.
The US, the UK, China, Australia, South Korea, Japan and a number of European countries have already launched 5G services. India, on the other hand, has delayed a planned 5G spectrum auction until 2021 due to the unavailability of use cases and lack of interest from private telecom operators such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea that have also said that the base price – Rs 492 crore a unit – was too high and wouldn’t attract bids.
Jio had previously informed the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and sought its approval to conduct 5G trials based on its own technology. It had earlier given a separate presentation to the DoT to explain its technology and possible use cases. But these trials are also yet to be held, pending clarity on Huawei.
Jio had also submitted separate applications for 5G field trials, with all other telecom gear vendors, including Samsung, Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE. Vodafone Idea and Airtel too had submitted their proposals jointly with Ericsson, Nokia, and Chinese giant Huawei.