Jio aims for global telcos with 5G solutions

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani is looking to sell affordable 5G software solutions to global telecom service providers. A dedicated team in Jio Plaforms Ltd (JPL) has developed the next-generation 5G stack to make 5G affordable and accessible everywhere. Jio and California-based Qualcomm, along with JPL’s wholly owned subsidiary, Radisys Corporation, have developed an open and interoperable interface compliant architecture-based 5G solution with virtualised radio access networks (vRANs), a way for telecom operators to run baseband functions as software.

In the last Reliance Industries annual general meeting, Ambani talked about making India a global hub for 5G development and export. “Once Jio's 5G solution is proven at India-scale, we are excited by the prospect of exporting Jio 5G solutions to telecom operators across the world,” Ambani said. Sources say trials of software solutions are progressing and the possibility of selling it to other telecom companies is imminent as 5G migration becomes faster in developed countries.

Jio has collaborated with global technology leaders to develop an open and inter-operable interface-compliant architecture based 5G solution to accelerate the development and rollout of indigenous 5G network infrastructure and services in India, the company said in the annual report. “This technology marks the entry of Jio into the Gigabit 5G product portfolio and provides subscribers with faster data at lower costs,” it added.

JPL and Qualcomm have collaborated for local manufacturing of critical equipment for 5G ecosystem in India. They recently tested 5G solutions in India, achieving the 1 gigabytes per second (GBPS) milestone on Jio 5G solution, which include core network and smartphones. Qualcomm builds semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology and it owns patents critical to the 5G, 4G and CDMA2000. Work is also ongoing on standardising 5G device configurations by collaborating with Original Equipment Manufacturers.

In collaboration with Google as a strategic partner and investor, JPL is also developing an entry-level affordable smartphone with optimised operating system. Jio had emerged as winner under ‘5G Innovation’ category at Aegis Graham Bell Awards.

Ambani said at the AGM, Jio's engineers have developed a 100 per cent home-grown and comprehensive 5G solution which is fully cloud native, software defined, and digitally managed. “Together with our partners, we have tested Jio 5G solutions in India and we successfully demonstrated speeds well in excess of 1GBPS…. Recently, we received necessary regulatory approvals as well as trial spectrum for initiating 5G field-trials,” he said.

JIo has already installed 5G standalone network in its data centres across the country and at its trial sites in Navi Mumbai.