Reliance to invest Rs 2 lakh crore to roll out 5G services

Reliance Industries will invest Rs 2 lakh crore for the rollout of its much-awaited 5G service which promises to offer low latency and faster download speeds.

Addressing the 45 Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Reliance Industries, Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) Mukesh Ambani said, “Jio has prepared an ambitious 5G roll-out plan which will be the fastest in the world.”

The Jio 5G services will be rolled out in key metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai by Diwali this year, and the CMD noted that by December 2023, it plans to have its presence in "every town, taluka and tehsil" of the country.

Reliance has already bagged the spectrum tights for the rollout of its 5G services, for which it is also partnering with global technology companies like Meta, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Qualcomm, Cisco, Ericsson etc.

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Ambani also expressed his regrets that despite strong growth, India lagged behind the rest of the world in fixed broadband connections.

“This has to change, and change fast. Jio will change this. We will launch India into the Top-10 league in fixed broadband adoption,” Mukesh Ambani said.

He listed Jio 5G's three objectives—deploy advanced versions of mobile broadband; accelerate the rollout of top quality, highly affordable fixed broadband services; and increase the pace of adoption of connected intelligent solutions for people from all walks of life.

Reliance Jio expects Jio 5G to play a key role in multiple sectors of the economy like education, healthcare, agriculture, and manufacturing, to name a few.

Akash Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Jio said, “An even more exciting possibility of Jio 5G is the ultra-high-speed fixed-broadband. Since you get fibre-like speeds over the air without any wires, we are calling it JioAirFiber. With JioAirFiber, it will be really easy to quickly connect your home or office to Gigabit-speed Internet.”

Reliance Jio has 421 million mobile broadband subscribers on its 4G network, with subscribers consuming nearly 20 GB of data every month. The fibre optic network is more than 11 lakh kilometres in length.

The 5G services of Reliance Jio is expected to bring the benefits of superior broadband connectivity to the vast majority of Indians, especially the small businesses.

“We will provide millions of medium businesses with the same digital capabilities that were earlier available only to larger companies,” Mukesh Ambani said.