Reliance Jio Partners with Qualcomm to Accelerate its 5G Tech Plans

Reliance Jio in collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies Inc is surging ahead in the telecom sector while accelerating the deployment of 5G mobile internet based on homegrown technologies, putting India in an exclusive club of nations with the capability to offer superfast speeds of one gigabyte per second (GB/s) to users. Jio, which started its public rollout in 2016 as the first 4G-only network in India, offering voice and data over the same LTE connection, has now moved into 5G, and it's expected to launch a value-for-money 5G smartphone that could help bring about Mukesh Ambani's goal of a 2G-mukt-Bharat (2G free India). The telco, which catapulted itself into being one of India's top telecom companies offering liberal free trials and extremely low rates, recently became the first provider to cross 40 crore subscribers. In the last few months, it has also drawn huge amounts of funding from the likes of Facebook and Google, and when 5G launches, it could well see a fresh round of growth.

Qualcomm has already invested Rs. 730 crore for 0.15 percent stake in Jio Platforms and was among the several private equity and technology firms which picked up a stake in the Reliance group company earlier this year. The partnership builds on the commitment by Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani, who announced in July that Jio was developing made-in-India 5G technology, giving the country control over coveted know-how that is the foundation of a digital economy. The two companies also announced that they achieved speeds of one GB/s on Jio’s 5G solution using a Qualcomm platform. For illustration, what this means is that it will be possible to download a typical movie with a file size of one gigabyte in just one second.

Our long-standing collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies will accelerate the development of a full suite of 5G products and solutions, as Jio continues to support and drive open technologies in RAN

Speaking at the keynote of Qualcomm's 5G Summit, Reliance Jio Infocomm President Matthew Oomen said that Jio has developed a fully indigenous 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) product. Qualcomm also said that Snapdragon will support OpenRAN 5G, along with Jio and various other telcos. “Our long-standing collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies will accelerate the development of a full suite of 5G products and solutions, as Jio continues to support and drive open technologies in RAN,” stated Matthew. He further added “From Silicon to software all the functions of a Software-defined RAN will get tested at Jio Scale. These standards-based open RAN technologies along with the new Qualcomm 5G RAN Platforms will help to bridge the gigabit digital gap to deliver the Inclusive Digital Platform that is so much a necessity today for lives and livelihood in India and beyond”.

Durga Malladi, Senior Vice President & General Manager, 4G/5G, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc, stated, “We recently achieved over a one GB/s milestone on the Reliance Jio 5G NR product, leveraging our Qualcomm 5G RAN platforms, and we look forward to expanding our efforts with Reliance Jio to enable flexible and scalable 5G RAN deployments". At the Reliance Industries annual general meeting in July, Chairman Mukesh Ambani had announced the design and development of a complete 5G solution and said it would be ready for trials once spectrum was made available.

Jio is also in partnership with Google and is developing affordable 4G and 5G smartphones based on Android, a development which could bring cheap smartphones to hundreds of millions of Indians and undercut dominant vendors from China.