Can Jio Walk Its Talk And Deliver Affordable 5G To 100 Million Homes Without Compromising Quality?

NEW DELHI: Addressing the 45th annual general meeting (AGM) of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), Mukesh Ambani, the company’s chairman, made a big promise: Launching Jio’s 5G operations by Diwali, And audaciously once again, Ambani promised to dare commercial boundaries and roll out “highly affordable fixed broadband services to hundreds of millions of locations in a very short period”, without compromising quality. The relaunch of Jio mobile services in 2015, had caused unprecedented disruption with audaciously low data tariff plans. Rivals had to match it, causing an exponential acceleration in the country’s transition from limited landline connectivity to near-universal coverage using cell phones. It is often described as a post-Jio world.
The big question is whether Jio can match its talk this time too. The transition from 4G to 5G is a game-changer, a paradigm shift that will completely transform the business of communication.
According to the World Economic Forum (WEF) fast, intelligent internet connectivity enabled by 5G technology is expected to create approximately $3.6 trillion in economic output and 22.3 million jobs by 2035 in the global 5G value chain alone. This is projected to translate into an estimated global economic value of $13.2 trillion,
To explore this and more we spoke to Mahesh Uppal, a consultant and head of Com First India, a company specializing in regulatory and policy aspects of telecom and the Internet.