Mukesh Ambani, chairman and CEO of Reliance Industries, said on Wednesday that the rollout of 5G services should be a national priority to ensure ‘Connectivity for the next Decade’, and in addition to policy, measures to make devices and services more affordable.
In his keynote address at the Indian Mobile Congress (IMC), Ambani said that keeping Indians confined to 2G is depriving them of the benefits of the digital revolution. India should put a high priority on developing 5G. Jio has developed a cloud-native, digitally managed solution that is 100 per cent homegrown. “Jio’s network can be quickly and seamlessly upgraded from 4G to 5G due to its converged, future-proof architecture,” he explained.
According to a recent Ericsson report, 5G will represent around 39 per cent of mobile subscriptions in India by 2027, or about 500 million subscriptions. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) reports that Reliance Jio has more than 44.38 crore subscribers. According to Ambani, the phenomenally rapid expansion of the mobile subscriber base in India has been driven by affordability.
In terms of policy, we usually think of affordability in terms of services. However, India should ensure the affordability of devices and applications as well, he said. Ambani believes the best way to ensure comprehensive affordability is through nimble adoption of innovative technologies and supportive policy instruments such as the Universal Service Obligation (USO) fund for purposes other than services.
During the Covid times, Jio introduced Fibre-to-Home to five million homes using USO funding. Nearly five per cent of the licence fee paid by telecom operators goes to the USO Fund. All the players in the industry can work together to achieve a nationwide footprint of fibre, Ambani said, as they reached mobile telephony to every corner of the nation in the past decade. He added that India must be fibre-ready to be future-ready since fibre has almost unlimited data capacity. In addition to connectivity, the country should focus on the critical components of the digital ecosystem needed for India’s digital transformation, Ambani said.
In India, a sound regulatory and policy framework has helped thousands of young entrepreneurs and start-ups build platforms, applications, and solutions to accelerate the country’s digital transformation.
Could 5G be a unified technology layer?
Five-generation mobile networks deliver multi-gigabit peak data speeds, ultra-low latency, increased reliability, massive network capacity, improved availability, and a uniform user experience to as many users as possible. With 5G, you will be able to control critical services remotely. This will advance autonomous driving, the Internet of things, personal communications, and how businesses access, store, share, and protect data.
