Reliance Jio is currently offering 5G services in over 50 cities across India
Indian telecommunications operator Reliance Jio Infocomm has launched 5G services in Odisha state, the telco said in a release.
The telco said that the two cities where Jio will be initially offering 5G are Bhubaneswar and Cuttack.
In Bhubaneswar, Jio said it has created a 5G experience zone and demonstrated the benefits of 5G in the field of healthcare, through its community clinic medical kit, education, cloud gaming, smart office and smart city use cases as well as its AR/VR device, Jio Glass.
A company spokesperson said that the telco’s 5G network will cover the cities of Rourkela, Berhampur, Puri, Sambalpur and Balasore in Odisha by February 2023. By the end of the year, the main towns and cities in Odisha will be covered by 5G services.
The telco had recently launched its 5G offering in certain cities in Andhra Pradesh state.
The carrier said that 5G technology will be initially available in the cities of Tirumala, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada and Guntur. Reliance Jio also said that this recent launch in Andhra Pradesh required an investment of $756 million.
Reliance Jio is currently offering 5G services in over 50 cities across India. Some of the cities where the telco already provides this technology include Delhi, Mumbai, Varanasi, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Nathdwara, Pune, Gurugram, Noida, Ghaziabad and Faridabad.
Jio is offering the 5G connectivity on an invitational basis, with users living in 5G-enabled cities who have 5G compatible smartphones receiving invitations.
The telco had initially announced the launch of the beta trial of its 5G services in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Varanasi in October. Jio is offering 5G through a Standalone network architecture.
Last year, Reliance Jio Infocomm announced 5G contracts with Nordic vendors Ericsson and Nokia. The deal with Ericsson marks the first partnership between Jio and Ericsson for radio access network deployment in the country.
Ericsson said that its energy-efficient 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) products and solutions and E-band microwave mobile transport solutions will be deployed in Jio’s 5G network.
Meanwhile, Nokia said that it has been selected as a major supplier by Reliance Jio to supply 5G Radio Access Network equipment from its AirScale portfolio countrywide in a multi-year deal.
Reliance Jio had previously secured a mix of wireless spectrum for 5G across 700MHz, 3.5GHz, and 26 GHz bands. Jio is the only operator with the 700 MHz low-band spectrum.
Indian operators have already deployed almost 21,000 5G base stations across the country as of the end of November, according to recent data from the country’s Department of Telecom (DoT).
According to the official data, Reliance Jio Infocomm has deployed a total of 17,687 5G base stations while rival telco Bharti Airtel deployed 3,293 base stations. The city with the highest number of 5G base stations as of the end of last month was Delhi, with 5,829, followed by Maharashtra (4,051), Gujarat (2,892), Tamil Nadu (2,229) and West Bengal (2,219).
