The company has committed Rs 2 trillion towards the launch of pan-India 5G in phases within 18 months.
As Reliance Jio completes six years of operations on Monday, the company is set to once again take a lead in the next digital transition — from 4G to 5G.
Come Diwali, Jio will become the only telecom operator to launch standalone 5G services with no fallback on 4G infrastructure, which will provide hyper speed, low latency and high capacity.
As is known, Jio’s launch of 4G services on September 5, 2016, led to a major shift in the industry’s tariff structure, which not only led to a jump in overall subscriber base but also led to a surge in data usage. The company stopped charging for voice calls and instead started charging only for data, which was followed by other operators as well.
The company has committed Rs 2 trillion towards the launch of pan-India 5G in phases within 18 months.
According to a recent Ericsson Mobility Report, mobile traffic in India has grown by around 15 times in the past five years and is expected to more than double in the next three years.
According to it, 5G is projected to account for nearly 40% of mobile subscriptions in India — 500 million — by the end of 2027. By then, smartphone users in India are forecast to consume 50 GB of data per month on average.
“RJio’s entry and growth also helped in making transformational changes not only to the telecom sector, but to the gig economy as well. But for its services, we wouldn’t have seen this kind of a shake-up — fall in tariffs, expansion of services and greater access of e-commerce, among others — in the country,” Mahesh Uppal, director, ComFirst India, a company specialising in the telecom regulatory space, said.
“However, RJio cannot be termed as solely responsible for the growth in the telecom and digital ecosystem as incumbents — Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Bharat Sanchar Nigam — also caught up by providing quality services at competitive prices,” he added.
Jio’s first 100 million subscribers were added within 170 days of launching the services, and later by July 2020 it became the first Indian operator (and second in the world) to cross 400 million users.
The data consumption in the country rose multi-fold to 86 billion GB per month as of 2022, from 1.1 billion GB a month recorded in 2016. Further, voice consumption rose to 14 billion minutes per day (from 2.2 billion minutes per day), while App downloads rose to 26.9 billion from 9 billion. The country’s average internet speed rose to 23.1 MPBS as of April 2022, from 5.6 MBPS recorded in March 2016, according to Jio data released along with the quarterly results.
https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/as-jio-completes-6-years-5g-to-boost-competitive-edge/2654974/
