A brief look at everything revealed about Jio 5G launch at the Reliance AGM

Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani revealed the launch timeline of the anticipated 5G services in India, at the 45th annual general meeting (AGM) held virtually on Monday. He said the service would launch in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai by Diwali this year and gradually spread to other metro and large cities and would reach every town and taluka across India by December 2023.

Ambani said that Jio’s 5G will be the most advanced in the world and will be based on its own indigenous end-to-end stack which is developed by 2000 Jio engineers over a period of 3 years. Jio’s Pan India 5G launch by December 2023 would be the world’s fastest rollout. Jio will invest Rs 2 lakh crore towards its 5G network deployment.

He revealed that the 5G network will be based on Standalone (SA) architecture which will have zero dependencies on the 4G network of the operator. Other operators will be opting for the non-standalone (NSA) architecture which will leverage the 4G network for voice services. Jio will be able to offer voice over new radio (VoNR) since it is the only operator to have access to 700 MHz spectrum which is in the sub GHz category and is essential for providing a true 5G experience.

Jio is in talks with all major smartphone manufacturers to support its 5G SA service for all new devices and to make the existing models compatible through over-the-air software updates. Ambani said that Jio has partnered with Google to develop an ultra affordable 5G smartphone, with Microsoft to expand the Azure ecosystem cloud-enabled business applications, with Meta for immersive technology-based use cases and also with Intel. Jio has awarded 5G network gear contracts to Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and Cisco for setting up its Pan India 5G network.