Reliance Jio has been aggressively working on becoming the early adopter of the 5G technology in India, ahead of the other telecom operators. According to sources, Jio will demonstrate the 5G services in action at the Indian Mobile Congress in Aerocity as well as in Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. The company is expected to showcase the live demonstration at the Reliance Corporate Park in Navi Mumbai, at the same time. The telco has reportedly partnered with three global companies for this demo.
To recall, Reliance Industries Limited announced its 5G plans at its 41st AGM, back in July. The company has been pushing itself in the 5G technology space ever since and even acquired a US-based telecom company to accelerate the process.
Jio is Setting Up Experience Zone to Demonstrate 5G Use Cases
People aware of the matter said that Reliance Jio is setting up an experience zone to showcase the experiential use cases of ultra 5G services in mobiles, and the use of the 5G technology for developing smart schools, hospitals, and offices.
According to a Jio Vendor, “The initial 5G services that public is expected to see in India is mobile ultra high-speed broadband when the commercial network will start rolling out. Jio will give a live demo of this enhanced speed on mobile devices.”
According to multiple reports, Reliance Jio’s LTE network is already 5G-prepared and the company is in the capacity to launch the 5G based services within the next 6 months of the spectrum allocation. Sources confirm that Jio is aggressively expanding its fiber-optic network, which is the key in developing a sustainable 5G network. According to a report by Morgan Stanley, “setting up the fiber lines is the most important near-term focal point for the telecom industry, especially, as the country is looking to move to 5G technology”.
The Indian government had recently announced its plans to allocate airwaves for 5G services by the end of 2019, and hence, Jio’s plans for 2020 chime in. Like we mentioned earlier, Reliance Jio will very likely roll-out its 5G based services within the next 6-months of spectrum allocation. 5G network will take the download speed to run 50 folds faster than what we are getting with the 4G network.
India’s Transition from 4G to 5G Would Be Relatively Faster
Aruna Sundararajan, the telecom secretary of India, believes that the country will switch from 4G to 5G much faster than the time when the country took a leap from 3G to 4G services. Her statement seems on point now that Reliance Jio is all geared up to put up a live show for the upcoming 5G services. We are expecting a full-throttle roll-out of the 5G technology in India in the year 2020. Industry experts also believe that Reliance Jio will be able to bring the 5G technology to masses faster than any other telecom operator as their network is IP-based.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has already suggested a range of 3300Mhz – 3600Mhz on the Spectrum for 5G services in India and the starting price of the band auction has been set as well. Last month, in September, the Indian government announced the setting up of a 5G India 2020 Forum comprising secretaries, scholars and experts. It also announced the development of an INR 500 crore corpus for an early roll-out of the services. Further, according to the government release, India is aiming at “a globally competitive product development and manufacturing ecosystem targeting 50% of the Indian market and 10% of the global market over (the) next five to seven years”.
